The Pool Where We Drowned

The rooftop pool at forty minutes past midnight was hers alone. Elena slipped into the water, the shock of cold hitting her like the truth she'd been avoiding for months. She began swimming laps, counting strokes the way she used to count their years together.

The vitamin supplements sat on her bathroom counter at home—his idea, his routine. Vitamin D for mood, B-complex for energy, omega-3 for heart health. She'd kept taking them after the funeral, this daily performance of care for a body that felt increasingly like a rental property she no longer wanted to maintain.

She paused at the pool's edge, breathing hard. The water lapped against the tile, rhythmic and indifferent. Below, the city burned with artificial light, but up here, under the bruised purple sky, everything was suspended.

"You're going to turn into a fish," Marcus had said that last summer, watching her from the lounge chair with a drink sweating onto the concrete. They'd still been happy then, or close enough to it.

Now she wondered if happiness had ever been real, or just another vitamin deficiency she'd mistaken for love. Something to be supplemented, managed, maintained.

She ducked underwater, holding her breath until her lungs burned. The silence was complete. No apologies left unsaid, no careful conversations about futures they'd stopped wanting to share. Just water pressing against her skin, elemental and honest.

When she surfaced, gasping, she understood something about endings: they weren't finishes at all. They were beginnings, just not the kind anyone wanted.

She climbed out, water streaming from her hair onto the concrete. Tomorrow she'd throw away the vitamins. Tomorrow she'd cancel the lease. Tonight, she'd lie on this lounge chair under a sky that didn't care about her plans, watching the water grow still again, and finally, finally learn how to be alone.