The Chlorine Season

The hotel pool sat empty at 3 AM, a perfect rectangle of black water reflecting nothing. I should have been sleeping. Instead, I sat on the concrete edge, feet dangling in, wearing the expensive dress I'd bought for a wedding that wasn't happening anymore.

My phone buzzed—Mia again. She'd been texting for days, calling herself my best friend while forwarding me photos of him with someone new. Some friend. I blocked her number and dry-swallowed a vitamin D supplement the doctor insisted I needed. Everything about me was deficient now.

The water lapped against my ankles. Chlorine smell always made me think of the summer we turned seventeen, when she bleached her hair platinum and we spent three months pretending we'd never have to grow up. Now I ran my hands through my own hair—still the same brown, still thick, still refusing to be the thing I changed.

I felt like a zombie lately, moving through the motions of a life I no longer recognized. Wake up, work, come home, stare at walls, repeat. The grief had hollowed me out, left me walking around with nothing inside.

A security guard appeared at the pool's edge, flashlight cutting through the darkness. I thought he'd tell me to leave. Instead he sat down beside me, far enough away to be decent, close enough to be real.

"Bad night?" he asked.

"Bad year," I said.

He nodded like he understood. "My wife died in March. Every morning I wake up and forget, for about thirty seconds. Then it comes back. That first thirty seconds—that's the best part."

We sat there as the sky began to lighten, two people who'd lost the versions of ourselves we'd planned to be. The pool caught the first gray light of dawn, looking almost peaceful.

"You don't have to go back in," he said, standing up. "Just so you know."

I nodded, watching him walk away. I slipped my feet out of the water, pulled them into my dress to warm them. Somewhere beyond the hotel walls, the world was starting its Tuesday. People were commuting, making coffee, pretending they knew what they were doing.

I reached into my purse and found one more vitamin. Let it be deficient, I thought, and dropped it into the pool, where it sank like a tiny white stone.