The Art of Drowning

Marcus watched her from across the breakfast table. Elena picked at her fruit plate, spearing cubes of papaya with deliberate precision, avoiding his gaze. The resort restaurant buzzed around them — families with screaming children, honeymooners tangled in each other's arms, the living contrast to what they'd become.

'You're not eating,' he said, pushing his own plate away. His eggs congealed beneath a layer of cold spinach, the green wilting like everything else between them.

'I'm not hungry.' She set down her fork. 'I'm going swimming.'

'You haven't been in the ocean since the incident.'

'That was three years ago, Marcus.' She stood up, her chair scraping against the tile. 'I'm going. You can join me or you can sit here and stare at your spinach until it rots.'

He didn't follow. Instead he watched her walk toward the beach, her body a dark line against the white sand and impossibly blue water. She stepped into the waves, dove under, surfaced — swimming straight out, further and further from shore until she was just a speck, a possibility he'd lost the right to claim.

The waiter came by. 'Everything alright, sir? Can I get you anything else?'

Marcus thought about saying no. He thought about asking for the check, packing his bags, leaving before she returned. Instead he heard himself ask: 'Do you have any more papaya?'

When Elena came back, hours later, water dripping from her hair onto her dress, salt crystallizing on her skin like second thoughts, she found him sitting at the same table, a fresh plate of fruit before him. She didn't sit down.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'I know,' he said. 'Me too.'

She touched his shoulder, her fingers cold and chlorinated, and he thought that sometimes swimming was just another word for not drowning yet. That the papaya would always taste sweeter in the eating than the anticipation. That love, like spinach, could be something you forced yourself to swallow because it was good for you, even when you'd lost the taste for it entirely.