The Drift

The orange slices floated in the pool like abandoned ideas, their edges already softening in the chlorine. Mara stood at the shallow end, her iphone clutched in one hand like a weapon she couldn't bring herself to use. Three unread messages from David glowed on the screen.

"You're doing it again," Lena called from the deck chair, not looking up from her magazine. "That thing where you go underwater and forget to come up for air."

Mara had been swimming laps for an hour, her body moving through the water with mechanical precision while her mind replayed the fight from last night. David's voice—I just think we need different things—echoing against the tiled walls. The pool was closed now, but the night guard had stopped checking the southwest corner years ago.

"I'm not swimming," Mara said, finally wading toward the stairs. "I'm conducting research on buoyancy. Specifically, how long you can float before something drags you down."

Lena snorted, finally lowering her magazine. "That's the most pretentious way I've ever heard someone say 'I'm avoiding my relationship problems.'"

Mara climbed out, water streaming from her hair like time she couldn't get back. She sat beside Lena, both of them staring at the orange slices now clustered in the pool's center, drawn together by some unseen current.

"He wants me to move to Chicago," Mara said quietly.

"And?"

"And I don't know if I'm running toward something or away from something else. That's the problem with swimming in circles—you lose track of which direction is forward."

Her iphone buzzed again. David. She didn't need to look to know. The screen lit up the dark patio, casting long shadows across Lena's face.

"You know," Lena said, reaching for one of the discarded orange wedges from the poolside table, "sometimes the water's just water. Not everything has to mean something. Maybe you love him, maybe you don't. But standing here parsing every metaphor won't change that you're the only one still treading water."

Mara looked at her phone, then at the orange in Lena's hand, segmented and exposed. Some things, she realized, could only be understood by taking them apart.

She pressed answer.