Memory Lane at the Motel 6

The pool was empty at 3 AM, which was exactly why Elena had chosen this hour. She sat on the plastic lounger in her coat, the faux-fir **hat** pulled low over her eyes, nursing a warm gin and tonic from the vending machine. Three months after the funeral, and she still couldn't sleep without remembering.

"You're going to lose him," Sarah had said that last day at this same pool, her wet **hair** slicked back like a seal's. They'd been coming here since college, Tuesday nights when the lifeguard clocked off early and they could smoke cigarettes in peace. "You're going to lose him, and then what?"

Elena had kicked the water, sending chlorinated waves lapping against the tiles. "He's just a boyfriend, Sarah. Not the end of the world."

But Sarah had already turned away, her voice thick with something Elena hadn't recognized until it was too late. "Some things you don't get back."

That was the last time they spoke. Two weeks later, Sarah drove her car off the cliff road. The note mentioned none of it—just thanked her parents for everything, asked that her **goldfish**, Bubbles, be given to her niece. Elena had cried for three days straight at the funeral, wearing the hat Sarah had bought her as a joke—a ridiculous pink thing with a net veil—and watched them lower the casket, wondering what she'd missed.

Now she rose and walked to the pool's edge, studying her reflection. The woman staring back was older, yes, but also someone Sarah wouldn't recognize. Someone who'd learned that friendship could be a matter of life and death, that some words changed everything, that you could mourn someone the same way you mourned a limb or a lover—a permanent, aching absence.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the water, to Sarah, to the person she'd been. "I should've listened."

The pool offered no answer, just the lapping of water against tiles, the same sound Sarah must have heard in whatever darkness had taken her. Elena finished her drink, set the glass on the concrete, and walked back to her room, alone with all the things she'd never said.