The Art of Treading Water

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly why Marco chose this hour. He'd been swimming laps for forty-five minutes, his body moving through the chlorinated water with the mechanical precision of someone trying to outdistance their own thoughts. His divorce had been final for three months, yet he still woke most nights with the phantom sensation of another person in his bed.

He pulled himself from the pool, water dripping from his aging frame—forty-seven now, and everything felt heavier. The vending machine dinner had been sad enough: a wilted salad with spinach leaves that tasted like resignation, a turkey sandwich that had seen better days. He'd eaten sitting on the edge of the bed, watching cable television he'd kept only because silence had become unbearable.

The baseball game on the screen had been from 1998, a recording he'd made back when he still believed in collecting moments. Back when Sarah had smiled at him across the living room, back when he thought love was something you could preserve like a home video. Now he understood it was more like swimming—you had to keep moving or you'd sink. Motion was the only thing keeping him afloat.

Marco dried himself with the rough hotel towel, his reflection in the mirror catching him off guard. When had he become this person? This middle-aged man staying in hotels in his own city, swimming laps in the dark because the apartment felt like a museum exhibit of a marriage that had failed?

He remembered the way Sarah used to laugh when he got spinach stuck in his teeth, her thumb gently brushing it away. The intimacy of small things. The way they'd watched baseball together, her head on his shoulder, not caring about the score. Now every game felt like a funeral.

The cable droned on in his room—some infomercial about kitchen appliances that promised to change everything. Nothing changed. You just got better at pretending.

Marco lay on the hotel bed, still damp from the pool, and let himself float there in the darkness, suspended between who he'd been and who he might become. Some days, that felt like enough.