The Color of Almost

The orange slices sat between us on the aluminum bench, sweating in the humidity like we were. It was the bottom of the ninth, and somewhere in the distance, a baseball cracked against wood—a sound that used to mean summer, possibility, the way Eliot's hand would find mine in the dark.

Now it just meant time passing.

'You used to love this,' he said, not looking at me. His beer can left a ring on the painted metal.

'I used to be twenty-two,' I replied. 'I used to think love could fix things.'

The fertility doctor's voice still echoed in my head—unexplained, they called it. A medical term for heartbreak with no cause.

We hadn't touched in three months. Not really.

The swimming pool beckoned from beyond the outfield fence—blue and artificial and perfect, where neighborhood kids splashed without a care. I'd joined a gym last month, started swimming laps at 5 AM. The water held me up when nothing else could. There was something about the silence underwater, the rhythm of breath and stroke, that let me forget—for forty minutes at a time—that my body had failed us.

Eliot's hand moved toward my knee, stopped halfway. His knuckles were white around his beer.

'My mother asked again,' he said quietly. 'About when.'

I stood up, the orange slices tumbling from my lap to the dirt below. 'I'm going to the pool.'

'Sarah—'

'No. Not tonight.'

I walked toward the chain-link fence separating the baseball diamond from the swimming pool, where the water glittered under floodlights like something you could drown in. Something you could breathe. Behind me, I could hear Eliot stand up, could feel the weight of three years of almosts and not-quites pressing against my spine.

Then his footsteps. His hand on my shoulder, hesitant. 'Teach me,' he said. 'The swimming. Show me what keeps you from drowning.'

The pool water was cold, shocking us both. We treaded water side by side in the shallow end, not touching, but present. The orange glow of sunset painted everything gold, and for the first time in months, I could almost believe we might learn to float again.