The Architect of Regret

The margarita glass sweated on the pool edge, condensation dripping like my own misplaced ambition. Forty-two years old and I was still pretending to know who I was. The villa in Tulum had been Elena's idea—some marriage retreat, she'd called it. But Elena had spent the last three days at a spa, and I'd spent them watching the dog. A stray that wandered in from the beach. A mangy thing with one ear that refused to stand. I'd named him Buster, because naming things made them harder to leave.

I'd come here to finish my novel. Instead, I'd spent sixty hours staring at the pyramid of Chichen Itza through the lens of existential dread. The Mayans built their stone giants to touch gods they couldn't see. I built a career in corporate law I couldn't explain to myself. The symmetry was almost funny.

"You're going to eat that spinach?" Elena asked, appearing behind me. She'd returned from the spa glowing, radiant in a way that made my chest ache. I looked down at my plate. The spinach was wilted, drowning in garlic and olive oil. Just like us.

"Not hungry," I said.

She sat beside me, close but not touching. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. The water lapped at the pool's edge. A palm frond scraped against the stucco wall like a secret trying to get out.

"I met someone," she said quietly.

The bottom fell out of my stomach. Or maybe it had been gone for years and I was only now noticing the draft.

"At the spa?"

"No. Before. In Chicago."

I nodded. I should have been angry. Should have thrown the margarita. Should have demanded the name, the timeline, the how-could-you. Instead, I thought about Buster, who'd stopped coming around yesterday. Animals knew when to leave before things got messy. They had better instincts than lawyers.

"Are you in love with him?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what love is anymore."

The pyramid in the distance cast a long shadow across the pool. We sat there as the sun went down, two people who'd built something that looked like a life but felt like a facade. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once.

"The spinach is probably cold anyway," I said.

She laughed. A real laugh, surprising both of us. And for the first time in years, we were something other than strangers pretending to be married. We were just two people in the dark, waiting to see what came next.