The Bear at the Bottom of the Pool

The bear wasn't real, of course. It was the shadow cast by the tree branch that dangled over the pool, its knotted silhouette writhing in the blue water like something drowning. But in that moment, legs burning from lap after endless lap, it looked like a bear reaching up to pull me under.

I stopped swimming, treaded water in the deep end. This was my fourth month of daily laps after Sarah left. The pool had become my church, my confessional, the place where the cable-knit sweater of my old life—the one she'd bought me for our fifth anniversary—could finally unravel in peace. Without her.

"You still coming here every day?" I called out to Marco, my only real friend from the old days. He sat on the metal bench, his baseball glove resting on his knee like a dead thing. He'd been the one who introduced us, ten years ago at a company softball game. Sarah in right field, me at bat, a single moment of eye contact that had felt like fate at the time.

Marco shrugged. "Someone's got to keep this old man company."

I swam to the edge, hauled myself up. Water streamed from my hair, pooled around my feet like the remains of something.

"You ever think about how much things changed?" I asked. "Like, really changed?"

Marco looked at his glove, then at me. His eyes held that particular sadness that comes from watching someone you care about slowly realize their life has become something they never chose.

"Every day," he said softly. "Every single day, I think about how you and Sarah were supposed to be the ones who made it. And now you're out here swimming laps with a bear in the deep end, and I'm sitting here with a baseball glove I haven't used since college."

The bear-shadow moved across the pool as the sun shifted. For a moment, it looked like it was waving. Like it understood.

"Yeah," I said. "But at least we're still here."

Marco smiled, small and genuine. "That's something."

I dove back in, left the bear behind me. Some days, that was enough.