The Art of Missing

The pool at the Marriott Courtyard was eerily empty at 2 AM. Sarah sat at the edge, her legs submerged in water that felt too warm, too artificial. She'd spent three hours in the hotel bar, waiting for a text that never came.

Her phone vibrated. Not him. It was Mark. Her best friend from college. The man she'd loved in secret for a decade while he married someone else.

"You up?" his message read.

Sarah hesitated. She'd just flown across the country to sleep with a married man she'd met at a conference — a man who promised he'd leave his wife but hadn't shown up tonight. And here was Mark, checking in, as he somehow always did when she was at her lowest.

"Babe Ruth struck out 1330 times," Mark had told her the night before his wedding, nine years ago. They'd been sitting on a roof deck, drinking cheap wine. "But he hit 714 home runs. The point is you have to swing."

She'd almost told him everything that night. Instead she'd smiled and said, "You'll be great, Mark." and watched him walk away from something that could have been everything.

"I'm in Chicago," she typed now. "At the Marriott pool."

"Funny. I'm in Chicago too. Convention."

The water lapped against her calves. This was it — the moment she'd imagined a thousand times. The convergence.

"Room 412," she wrote before she could lose her nerve. "Unless you're still married."

The ellipsis bubbles appeared, then stopped. Then appeared again. She felt sick, brilliant, terrified.

"Divorced two years," his message came. "Be there in five."

Sarah slipped into the pool fully. The water swallowed her sound, her heartbeat, the weight of every wrong turn she'd taken. She would finally swing. Mark would knock. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't strike out this time.