The Architect of Regret

Margaret stood at the edge of the rooftop pool, the water reflecting the corporate pyramid she'd spent twenty years climbing. She was forty-five, and the view from the top wasn't worth the climb. Her ex-husband had taken the dog—a golden retriever named Buster who'd loved her more than any man ever had. The settlement gave her the condo, the pool access, and enough alimony to pretend she wasn't lonely.

She ordered another gin and tonic from the cabana boy who couldn't be older than twenty-five. He reminded her of someone, maybe the college baseball player she'd dated before she chose security over passion. That summer had been all about cheap beers and double-headers, before she learned that love didn't pay the mortgage.

"You have something in your teeth," the young man said, gesturing to his own incisor.

Margaret touched her front tooth. A piece of spinach from the lunch she hadn't eaten. She'd ordered the spinach salad because that's what women like her ordered—something healthy, something that said she still cared about herself even when she didn't.

She laughed, a sound that surprised her with its genuine bitterness. "I suppose that's fitting, isn't it? Spinach in my teeth at the corporate retreat. Maybe I should just embrace it."

The boy looked confused, then uncomfortable. Margaret tipped him too much and sent him away.

She'd spent decades building her pyramid—assistant VP, regional manager, director of operations. Each promotion had felt like victory at the time. Now, staring at the artificial turquoise of the pool, she wondered if she'd been building a monument to her own unhappiness all along.

Her phone buzzed. Her daughter from college, probably needing money or forgiveness. Margaret didn't answer. Instead she dipped her feet into the pool, the water shocking her skin into feeling something again.

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a baseball game from a nearby park. The crack of a bat, the collective cheer. For a moment, she was twenty again, believing that the future was something that happened to other people, not something you carefully constructed one compromised choice at a time.

Margaret removed the spinach from her teeth and watched it sink into the chlorine blue. She would go back to her room, change into her power suit, and network until the cocktail hour ended. She would climb back down her pyramid tomorrow and start over at another firm. But tonight, with her feet in the water and baseball echoing across the city, she allowed herself to miss the dog, the boy, the girl she'd been before she learned that winning meant losing pieces of herself along the way.