The Art of Drowning Slowly

The running started six months ago, when Marcus found himself driving home at 2 AM from a woman's apartment he'd never see again. His thighs would burn, lungs heaving, as if he could outrun the wreckage he'd made of his marriage. Three miles each night, pavement slapping beneath his sneakers, sweat cooling on his skin like regret.

Now he stands in their bathroom, watching Clara swallow her prenatal vitamins—one more thing they'd stopped trying for, one more silence between them. She doesn't look up. The bottle clatters against the counter, and he remembers how she used to hold his hand across restaurant tables, how her palm would fit into his like they were carved from the same stone.

"I'm going swimming," she says, not a question.

He watches her dive into the pool below their balcony, her body cutting through blue water with the grace that once made him weep. She surfaces, slick and distant as a moon, and he feels something ancient and hollow open inside his chest. They'd bought this place for the view—the cable stretching across the bay like a steel vein, carrying voices that weren't theirs.

Marcus grips the railing. His knuckles whiten. Below, Clara pulls herself through water that holds her better than he ever could. He wants to jump, wants to feel the shock of cold, wants anything but this drowning in air, this slow dissolution of two people who used to fit together like breathing.

His phone buzzes—another name he shouldn't answer, another shore he shouldn't swim toward. The running hadn't saved him. Nothing would.

He turns back to the vitamin bottle on the counter, pretends he doesn't know what's missing, pretends he doesn't hear Clara surfacing below, pretending they're both still whole.