The Physics of Leaving

The orange sunset bled into the pool water, turning the surface into something that looked like bruised skin. Mara sat on the deck chair, her iphone vibrating for the third time in five minutes. She didn't need to check to know it was him.

"You've been running in circles," her sister had said yesterday over coffee. "Literally and figuratively."

She wasn't wrong. Mara had taken up running three months ago, shortly after discovering the first email. Now she logged forty miles a week, her knees aching constant metronomes counting down something she couldn't name.

The pool house door slid open. David stepped out, two beers in hand, his silhouette framed against the glass like a confession she wasn't ready to hear.

"Your mother called," he said, handing her a bottle. "She wants to know if we're still coming for Thanksgiving."

Mara took the beer. The glass was sweating in the humidity. "What did you tell her?"

"That we'd talk about it. That things are... complicated." He sat beside her, close enough that their arms touched, distant enough that she could pretend they didn't.

She watched an orange leaf drift onto the pool's surface. It spun slowly, caught in something she couldn't see.

"Remember when we put in the pool?" David asked quietly. "You said it was ridiculous. Too much money for something we'd use three months a year."

"I was wrong."

"You were right." He looked at her then, really looked at her, for the first time in weeks. "We haven't used it once this summer."

Her iphone buzzed again. This time she glanced at the screen. An unknown number.

"Who is it?" David asked.

"Nobody."

"Mara."

She stood up, suddenly unable to breathe. "I'm going for a run."

"It's almost dark."

"I know."

"You're always running now."

"Maybe that's the point." She walked toward the gate, her running shoes waiting by the door like accomplices.

"Mara, wait."

She paused but didn't turn around.

"I saw the texts," he said. "I've known for months."

The silence stretched between them, taut and terrible.

"And you stayed?" she whispered.

"I was hoping you'd choose us. I was hoping that if I waited long enough, you'd remember who we were. Before the running. Before the iphone notifications at midnight. Before."

She looked at the pool, at the orange leaf now sinking beneath the water's surface. Some things, she realized, eventually go under whether you want them to or not.

"I don't think I know how to choose anymore," she said.

"Then stop running," he said, his voice cracking. "Just stand still. For once in your life, stand still."

She looked at her running shoes. Then back at him, at the home they'd built, at the fifteen years stretched thin between them.

"I can't," she said, and pushed through the gate.

Behind her, the pool lights clicked on automatically, illuminating nothing but water.