The Night We Drowned

Marlena found me swimming at 3 AM in the apartment complex pool, doing laps like I could outpace the tumor growing in my lung. The water was cold, almost numbing, exactly how I needed it to be.

"You're going to kill yourself," she said, sitting on the edge with her legs in the water. We hadn't spoken since the corporate merger collapsed, since she chose the promotion over our friendship. The office had turned into a slaughterhouse, and she'd been the one holding the knife.

"Better than letting the cancer do it slowly."

She laughed, dark and humorless. "Remember when we used to call Jackson 'The Bull'? How he'd charge through every negotiation like he owned the world?"

I remembered. Jackson had been our boss, our mentor, the man who'd built us into his protégés. Until he didn't. Until the federal investigation revealed he'd been embezzling for years, taking down anyone who questioned him with the precision of a predator.

"He died last week," Marlena said quietly. "Found him in his garage. Carbon monoxide."

I stopped swimming, treading water in the deep end. "And you're here because...?"

"Because I'm next." She looked at me then, really looked, and I saw how much weight she'd lost, how her eyes had aged a decade in months. "The investigation widened. They're looking at everyone Jackson mentored."

The water suddenly felt suffocating. "You didn't do anything."

"Does it matter?" She slipped into the water, fully clothed. "Jackson taught us well. Charge first, ask questions never. Be the bull." She swam toward me, her movements desperate. "I'm tired, Elena. So tired."

I wanted to hate her. I wanted to remind her that she'd chosen ambition over loyalty, that she'd betrayed our friendship for a title and a corner office. But in that pool, under the moonlight, watching someone I'd once loved like a sister contemplate the same escape I'd been dancing with for months, I found myself reaching for her hand instead.

"Keep swimming," I said. "Just keep swimming."

She didn't answer, but she didn't stop either. We swam side by side in the dark, two people who'd learned too late that being the bull meant eventually facing the matador alone. The water held us both, indifferent to our sins, offering only the choice between drowning and learning to breathe beneath the surface.