Signal Loss

The spinach stuck between your teeth during what should have been our most honest conversation. I watched you pick at it with your tongue, that small green fleck becoming the only thing I could focus on as you told me you'd been sleeping with your coworker for three months.

We were at your sister's house, standing by the pool where we'd swum last summer, drunk and naked and sure we'd never become the kind of people who said things like "we need to talk." The water reflected the orange light of sunset, or maybe that was just the backyard security light—everything was the color of warning.

Your iPhone buzzed on the patio table. You didn't check it. You just kept looking at me with those eyes that used to make me feel like I was the only person who'd ever really seen you. Now I wondered if you looked at her the same way. If she knew you hated olives. If she knew about your mother.

"The cable guy's coming Thursday," you said suddenly, apropos of nothing, like we could just keep paying bills and scheduling appointments and moving forward through this domestic architecture we'd built together, even as you were dismantling it from the inside.

I thought about swimming naked in this pool last year, how we'd laughed when your sister's golden retriever barked at us, how we'd raced each other to the other end and I'd let you win. How that moment felt like it would stretch forever, not realizing forever is just what you call the time before it runs out.

The spinach was gone. You smiled, and it was the same smile that had made me trust you with everything I had, which was how I ended up here: heart exposed, waiting for the verdict.

"I still love you," you said, like those words could fix this. Like love was a cable you could splice back together after it had been cut.

I didn't say anything. I just watched the pool lights flicker on, automatic and indifferent, turning the water into something that looked deep enough to drown in, even though I knew it was only five feet at its deepest point. Some things feel like they should kill you, and don't. Some things feel like nothing, and ruin you completely.