The Blue Light Hour

The iphone lit up the darkness at 3:14 AM, Sarah's name burning through my retinas like a brand. I'd told myself I wouldn't check it anymore—that I'd let the dead remain dead—but there I was, palm sweating against the sleek glass, scrolling through three years of messages like they were holy scripture.

Outside our bungalow, the Caribbean sea whispered against the shore, rhythmic and indifferent. I'd come to this expensive purgatory to swim through the wreckage of myself, to let salt water erase whatever tears hadn't already been shed in the shower of our apartment—the one she'd kept, along with the dog and the espresso machine.

The fruit basket on the nightstand held a papaya, its sunset-orange flesh speckled with black seeds like some exotic disease. Sarah had always loved them. Said they tasted like optimism. I'd found them cloying, too sweet, like her constant reassurance that everything would work out, even as I watched our savings evaporate into her startup dreams.

Tomorrow I'd check out. Tomorrow I'd return to my brother's couch and start over at thirty-seven, with half a decade and half a heart less than I'd had when we met. But tonight, I lowered myself into the infinity pool, the water warm as amniotic fluid, suspended somewhere between the artificial lights of the resort and the ancient darkness of the ocean beyond.

My phone sat on the deck, Sarah's last message still glowing: "I never meant to break us."

Some things, I thought, submerging myself completely, don't break—they drown. And some things, I realized surfacing, gasping, were never meant to swim at all.