The Chlorine Summer

Elena sat by the pool at 2 AM, the water still and black as a mirror. In her hand: a plastic organizer of vitamins—D for the depression her doctor refused to call depression, folic acid for the baby they'd stopped trying for eighteen months ago, B-complex for energy she no longer felt.

She swallowed them dry, the pills scratching her throat, and thought about Marcus. He'd be asleep in their room, or pretending to be, the way he'd pretended to be happy since the second miscarriage. Since before that, if she was honest with herself. The pool's surface rippled in the wind. She considered slipping into the water, letting it erase everything.

Instead, she went to the resort restaurant, ordered a spinach salad she didn't want. The waitress gave her a pitying look— Elena in her silk robe at 2:15 AM, tears tracking through her makeup. The spinach tasted like iron and regret.

The next morning, they played padel. Marcus's competitive streak emerged in violent serves, in the way he smashed every ball past her. Elena stopped returning them somewhere in the second set, just watched the yellow balls bounce against the wire fence. Sweat dripped down her back.

"You're not even trying," he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet, the paddle still raised.

"I'm tired, Marcus."

"You're always tired." He lowered the paddle. "You're always sad, always taking those vitamins, always sitting by the pool at night like you're waiting to drown yourself."

The words hung between them, hot and shameful. A hotel employee walked past with a cart of clean towels, pretending not to hear.

"Maybe I am," she said.

Marcus's face crumbled. All the anger left him, leaving something smaller behind. "I don't know how to fix this, El. I don't know how to fix us."

"Maybe we don't."

That night, she took her vitamins by the pool again. But this time she stripped down to nothing and slipped into the water. The chlorine bit her skin. She floated on her back, staring at the stars, and for the first time in months, she thought: maybe this isn't drowning. Maybe this is learning to swim.