Swimming With The Bull

The corporate retreat was Marco's idea—mandatory bonding at a lake house in Vermont. I wanted to beg off, but Sarah had already booked the cat sitter and promised we'd make it romantic somehow. The first night, while everyone played beer pong and talked about Q4 projections, we slipped down to the dock. The water was black under a half-moon. 'Swimming?' she asked, already unbuttoning her blouse. I followed her in, the lake shockingly cold against my skin. We treaded water in the silence, watching our colleagues' silhouettes around the fire pit above. 'This is nice,' she said, but her voice sounded distant, like she'd already left. The next morning, the facilitator brought in a literal bull—a calf, really—for some bullshit exercise about 'herd mentality' and leadership instincts. Sarah held the rope while the creature stared at us with ancient, knowing eyes. That afternoon, I found her in the guest room, packing early. 'Something's wrong,' I said. She didn't look up. 'Your cat's been sick for months, hasn't she?' 'How did you—' 'You check your phone constantly during sex. You think I don't notice?' The bull snorted somewhere outside, disturbing the false peace. 'I'm going home,' she said. 'To Luna.' I drove back alone, watching autumn leaves scatter across the windshield like guilt. When I unlocked my apartment, my own cat wound between my legs, meowing for dinner. I realized then that Sarah had been right about so many things—about me, about us, about the way we'd both been swimming through bullshit for years, pretending it was enough. The bull hadn't been the problem. We'd just been too cowardly to admit we were already drowning.