Poolside at the End

Margot stood at the edge of the **pool**, the water's surface broken only by the drifting cigarette butt of the man she'd spent seven years trying to fix. His fedora **hat** lay discarded on the patio furniture, sweat-stained and ridiculous, like everything about their life together.

A storm was rolling in from the mountains. She could taste the metallic charge of **lightning** in the air, that pre-violence electricity that always made her want to run naked into the street or burn something down. Instead she held her vodka tonic with both hands and watched David perform his usual party trick: explaining why he wasn't ready for children, wasn't ready for commitment, wasn't ready for anything that required actual sacrifice.

'You should try these new supplements,' her friend Sarah whispered, pressing a bottle of **vitamin** D3-K2 capsules into Margot's palm. 'They changed my life.' Sarah had started doing ayahuasca on weekends and talking about her 'trauma response' the way people talked about fantasy football. Everything was fixable now. Everything was a deficiency to be supplemented away.

Margot's **dog**, Barnaby, a rescue with one ear and abandonment issues that mirrored her own, pressed against her leg. He was the only living thing who didn't want something from her, who didn't expect her to be smaller or quieter or more palatable. She dropped the vitamin capsules into her clutch.

'I'm leaving him,' she said to Sarah, but Sarah was already drifting away toward the guy with the tattoos and the Bitcoin wallet.

David caught her eye across the pool, raising his glass in that way that used to make her feel seen, before she realized it was just another performance. A crack of thunder shook the deck chairs. The first raindrops fell, darkening the concrete around her bare feet.

'Coming inside?' David called. 'We're ordering tacos.'

Barnaby shivered against her leg. Margot looked at the hat, the water, the man who would never change, and felt something wild and electric break open inside her. She set down her drink, took off her heels, and walked toward the garden gate, the dog trotting beside her like he'd been waiting his whole life for this exact moment.

Behind her, the rain began to fall in earnest, washing the patio clean.