Shallow End, Deep Regrets

The chlorine stung Mara's eyes as she floated in her apartment complex's pool at midnight. She'd come here to escape—to let the water wash away the day's catastrophe—but the silence only amplified the memory of Ryan's voice across the conference room table.

'You're not seeing the bigger picture, Mara. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a friend for the team.' His words had been polite, professional, and utterly devastating. Fourteen years of friendship dissolved in thirty seconds of corporate maneuvering. Ryan had thrown her under the bus to secure his promotion, framing her as the architect of a project failure he'd secretly engineered.

A splash broke her reverie. A gray cat, the complex's stray that everyone fed but nobody claimed, stood at the pool's edge, tail twitching. It reminded her of the baseball games she and Ryan used to attend—cheap seats, lukewarm beer, discussing their dreams like they were fragile things worth protecting. He'd been the one who found her crying in her car after her father's funeral. She'd been his roommate through his divorce. They'd promised to always have each other's backs.

Now he'd become exactly the kind of person they used to mock.

Mara swam to the edge where the cat sat watching her. 'You're lucky,' she whispered, pulling herself up to sit on the concrete. The cat butted its head against her wet arm. 'You don't have to pretend to care about people who'd destroy you for a corner office.'

Her phone buzzed on the nearby lounge chair—Ryan again, probably wanting to explain, to minimize, to act like this was just business. She let it ring, then turned it off.

The cat curled up beside her as Mara let her legs dangle in the water. Tomorrow she'd update her résumé. Tomorrow she'd lawyer up. Tonight she'd sit by the pool with the only genuine friend she had left, and she'd learn how to start over.