The Lifeguard's Last Shift

The apartment complex pool sat stagnant at 3 AM, its surface reflecting the flickering blue light from the television that Elena had dragged onto the deck. She sat in the plastic lifeguard chair, still wearing her work clothes—blouse unbuttoned just enough to breathe, skirt bunched around her thighs. The coaxial cable snaked across the concrete like a dead vein, connecting her to a world that felt increasingly distant.

"You look like a zombie," Marcus said, climbing out of the pool with water streaming down his bare chest. He was the night maintenance man, twenty years her senior, married to a woman who'd stopped looking at him years ago. They'd been meeting like this for three months.

"Feel like one too." Elena swallowed a vitamin D supplement—her third attempt to combat the fluorescent lighting of her office job. "My boss called me 'disengaged' today. Said I lack 'vitality.'"

Marcus laughed, dark and knowing. "He'd look dead too if he spent forty hours a week staring at spreadsheets instead of living." He moved closer, water dripping from his hair onto the concrete near her feet. "We're all just walking around half-alive anyway. Some of us are just honest about it."

Elena watched him—this married man who made her feel more alive than her unmarried fiancé ever had. The irony wasn't lost on her. "I broke up with David tonight."

Marcus's hand stilled on her knee. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. He was planning our wedding while I was planning how to disappear."

"And now?"

"Now I'm sitting by a pool in the middle of the night with you." Elena met his eyes. "Not exactly the responsible choice."

"Responsible is overrated." Marcus leaned in, his lips tasting of chlorine and recklessness.

As his hands found the hem of her shirt, Elena thought about vitamins and cable bills and wedding venues. She thought about the way her mother would cluck her tongue, the way her coworkers would whisper. Then she stopped thinking altogether.

The television flickered with infomercials, and somewhere in the distance, a car alarm pierced the night. In the pool's reflection, Elena saw two people who might just wake up from the walking dead, even if only until dawn.