The Pool Where We Drowned

The vitamin supplements sat in their orange plastic organizer on the bathroom counter, a silent accusation of the health routine we used to share. I swallowed them dry—D, B12, omega-3—while you were already downstairs by the pool, the smell of chlorine rising through the vents like memories I couldn't quite shake.

I found you floating on your back in the water, eyes closed, hair spread around you like dark ink. You looked so peaceful, so infuriatingly calm, as if you hadn't just destroyed the life we'd spent seven years building. The papaya tree we planted together stood in the corner of the yard, its leaves swaying in the morning breeze, mocking me with its stupid hopeful growth.

"You're doing it again," you said without opening your eyes. "That thing where you stand there and wait for me to notice you."

"I'm not doing anything," I said. "I'm just watching you swimming laps in the pool we bought with money we don't have anymore."

You turned onto your stomach and began swimming toward me with that lazy, confident stroke I used to find so attractive. Now it just made me tired. The water lapped against the tiles, the sound filling the silence between us like everything we weren't saying.

"The papaya's ripe," you said, pulling yourself up to sit on the edge. Water dripped from your hair onto your shoulders. "You should pick it before the birds get it."

"I don't want the papaya," I said. "I don't want the house. I don't want the stupid organic vitamin routine. I want you to tell me why her number was on your credit card statement."

You reached for the towel I'd brought down, your movements slow and deliberate. "It's complicated."

"No," I said. "It's actually very simple. You either did or you didn't."

You didn't answer. Just wrapped the towel around yourself and watched the water settle into stillness again. I looked at your wet hair, at the way it clung to your neck in little dark curls I used to wrap around my fingers in the mornings. Everything about you was so familiar and so completely strange.

"I'm leaving," I said. "Today."

You nodded, like you'd been waiting for this moment, like it was just another item on your to-do list. The vitamin container clattered when I slammed the bathroom door. The papaya fell from the tree and split open on the patio, its bright orange flesh exposed to the sun like a wound.