The Chlorine Between Us

She lay by the hotel pool in Palm Springs, her skin slick with expensive sunscreen that smelled like coconut and desperation. At 38, alone at a wellness retreat she'd booked on a credit card she couldn't really afford, Sarah felt like a cliché she'd have mocked five years ago.

Her iPhone buzzed against the concrete. Him again. About Buster. The golden retriever they'd adopted during their first year of marriage, the one they'd rescued together from a shelter in the rain, the one who'd slept between them every night until last month. Now she got the dog on weekends and he got the house.

She swallowed a handful of vitamins from the tiny plastic cups the resort provided at breakfast—B12, D3, something the brochure called "emotional balance support." They tasted like artificial citrus and wishful thinking. The yoga instructor had assured her that proper supplementation was key to releasing stored trauma. Sarah had nodded, knowing she was just paying $400 a night for permission to cry in a chaise lounge.

The pool water shimmered turquoise, deceptively calm. Below the surface, she could see the drain, pulling water into its grinning mouth. She thought about how easy it would be to just sink into that chlorinated stillness, let the chemicals leach everything out of her—the bitterness, the loneliness, the burning question of whether her ex had been sleeping with his assistant for six months or six years.

Her phone lit up again. A photo of Buster. Her ex had dressed the dog in a tiny sweater. "He misses you," the text read. Sarah stared at it, feeling something crack open in her chest, sharp and necessary. She'd been treating her grief like a vitamin deficiency, something that could be corrected with the right supplements and enough downward dogs.

She stood up, phone in hand, and walked to the pool's edge. The water reflected her silhouette, fragmented by ripples. She didn't dive in. She just stood there, letting the California sun burn her shoulders, knowing some things couldn't be wellness-ed away. Some things you just had to swim through.