The Pool at closing Time

Elara found him there again—Leo, floating on his back like some forgotten offering, the pool lights casting rippling shadows across his weathered face. Three weeks since his wife left, three weeks of showing up at the community center every Tuesday and Thursday, swimming laps until his arms shook and the lifeguards gave him concerned looks.

'You look like a zombie,' she said, sliding onto the adjacent deck chair, her bathing suit still damp from her own laps. It wasn't an insult—they'd been friends for fifteen years, since the cubicle farm at Miller & Associates had turned them both into something resembling the walking dead, surviving on vending machine snacks and the vague hope that somewhere, somehow, there was more to life than quarterly reports and mandatory team-building exercises.

Leo laughed, a dry sound that barely disturbed the humid air. 'That's rich, coming from you. You take more vitamin supplements than a GNC store. Trying to outlive capitalism?'

'Trying to outlive my twenties,' she corrected, though they were both well past thirty now. 'Besides, you're one to talk. I saw you at the office party. You were practically swimming in that cheap whiskey before you made your escape.'

The real truth hung between them, unspoken: Leo's wife hadn't just left—she'd left him for his boss. The irony was almost poetic enough to make the whole thing bearable. Almost.

'I keep thinking,' Leo said, staring up at the fluorescent lights, 'if I stay in the water long enough, maybe I'll just prune away completely. Become something new. Something that doesn't remember how she looked at me when she said she'd never loved someone who could be so... content with so little.'

Elara reached for his hand, her fingers pruning too. 'You know what my grandmother used to say? Every friend is a vitamin you didn't know you needed until you're deficient.' It was terrible advice, objectively nonsense, but it made something in Leo's chest loosen anyway.

They sat like that as the pool lights flickered off one by one, two zombies learning how to be human again, floating in the dark.