The Art of Drowning in Air

The papaya arrived already segmented, glistening with morning dew and something that might have been indifference. Elena picked at it with her fork, the fruit's orange flesh too bright against the white plate, too demanding of joy she didn't feel.

Across from her, David was reading his phone, his thumb scrolling through whatever was more interesting than their tenth anniversary trip.

"The spinach in the omelet was metallic," she said, just to say something.

"Hmm?" He didn't look up.

She stood up, her chair scraping against the terrace tiles. "I'm going to the pool."

"Okay." Still scrolling.

The water in the pool was that impossible blue that exists only in places people pay to forget themselves. She lowered herself into the cool silence, letting it seal over her ears. Underwater, she could almost hear her own thoughts again.

They'd been happy once. She remembered the way he used to look at her across crowded rooms, like she was the only person worth finding. Now he looked at her like furniture—familiar, functional, largely unnoticed.

Her head broke the surface. A pool boy with eyes like old coins was watching her. He couldn't have been twenty.

"Miss," he said, approaching with a towel. "There's an advisory about the current rip. Not that it affects the pool, but—the ocean today."

She accepted the towel, water dripping from her hair onto the concrete.

"Thank you," she said.

"I'm Mateo," he said, and when he smiled, she saw something hungry and hopeful and completely doomed.

She closed her hand around the towel's thick fabric. She could have him, she realized. She could have anyone, really. That was the terrible knowledge that had been growing in her like a tumor for months. She held their life in the palm of her hand—David's complacency, their mortgage, the sex that had become scheduled like dental cleanings.

"Elena," she said.

"Elena," he repeated, tasting it.

David was still at the terrace table when she looked back. He was laughing at something on his screen. The papaya sat there, oxidizing, turning brown around the edges where it had been cut open and left exposed to air.

She waded toward the pool steps. The water felt different now—like something she could either drown in or learn to breathe. Both possibilities felt like drowning. Both felt like breathing.

Mateo was still watching. She could feel his gaze on her back like heat.

She didn't turn around.