The Cable Man's Last Swim

Elena lay beside the hotel pool at 3 AM, nursing a drink that had gone warm hours ago. The pool lights glowed orange beneath the water's surface, casting an unnatural pallor across her wedding ring. She'd left it on—stupid sentimentality.

"You're still up."

She didn't turn. "Go back to your room, David."

The cable guy from earlier that day had said something that stayed with her: "Marriages are like connections—loose wire somewhere, and the whole thing goes dark." She'd wanted to slap him for his presumption. Instead, she'd tipped him twenty and watched him climb down the ladder, his orange safety vest bright against the gray sky.

Now David stood at the pool's edge. "Elena, please."

"Seven years," she said. "I asked you once what you thought about when you couldn't sleep. You said, 'Nothing.'"

"I didn't know what you wanted me to say."

"That was the answer I needed."

The hotel pool had been drained halfway, leaving a tangerine rim of grime. Like them—shallow, static, going nowhere.

"I remember our wedding," David said quietly. "The orange blossoms in your hair. How you cried when you saw me waiting at the altar."

"I was crying because I'd forgotten to eat that morning. And I was scared shitless."

"But you still—you still loved me then."

"I loved who I thought you'd become."

The cable repairman's words echoed again. Loose connections. Everything in their life had been loosely connected—jobs moved between cities, friends drifted, conversations surface-level. They'd been functioning, yes, but never truly live.

"I'm going to leave tomorrow," she said.

"I know."

"You're not going to ask me to stay?"

David slipped off his shoes and sat on the pool's edge, feet dangling in the drained half. "The cable guy—he asked if we were happy. I told him it wasn't his business. But I think I knew, even then, what was coming."

The orange pool lights flickered. Somewhere nearby, a television was on, the sound of laughter filtering through open doors.

"What did you think about?" Elena asked suddenly. "When you couldn't sleep."

David didn't answer for a long time. "I thought about how I could have been better."