The Drowning Pool

Marcus stood at the edge of the community pool, chlorine stinging his nostrils. Three months after Elena's funeral, and he was still swimming in circles—literally and metaphorically. The pool was empty at 6 AM, just the way he liked it.

He'd met her at a baseball game, of all places. She'd been wearing that ridiculous oversized jersey, her dark hair escaping from a messy bun, and when their teams collided in the seventh inning, so did they. She'd thrown a goldfish cracker at him during a heated debate about the call, and he'd been hooked ever since.

Now he swam laps, trying to exhaust himself enough to sleep through the night. His therapist suggested it. 'Channel the grief into something physical,' she'd said, as if grief were a muscle he could train into submission.

After his thirtieth lap, Marcus pulled himself to the pool's edge, gasping. A woman in the next lane stopped swimming.

'You're Marcus,' she said. It wasn't a question.

He blinked water from his eyes. 'Do I know you?'

'I'm Sarah. Elena's friend. From the sphinx party.'

The sphinx party. Halloween, two years ago. Elena had gone as a sphinx, complete with papier-mâché wings and riddles she'd drunkenly shouted at anyone who'd listen. She'd been magnificent.

'She kept your letters,' Sarah said, swimming over to the wall. 'In a shoebox. I helped clean out her apartment.'

Marcus's chest tightened. He hadn't known.

'She wrote back,' Sarah continued. 'Hundreds of them. Never sent them.' She paused. 'I have them. If you want them.'

The water suddenly felt too warm, too close. 'Why didn't she—'

'She thought you'd move on. She thought she was protecting you.' Sarah's expression softened. 'Love isn't always wise, Marcus. Sometimes it's just scared.'

Later, in his apartment, he opened the shoebox. The first letter was dated a week before she died. In her handwriting, familiar as his own heartbeat: *I'm sorry I never told you how much I loved watching you sleep. How you look like you're solving equations even in dreams.*

Marcus wept for the first time since the funeral. Not polite tears, but the kind that wrack your whole body, the kind you can't control.

The goldfish Elena had won him at that carnival—the one that had lived for five years against all odds—swam lazy circles in its bowl on the windowsill, oblivious to human sorrow.

Marcus picked up his pen. Started writing back.