The Pool Where We Drowned

The apartment complex pool was empty at 3 AM, which was exactly why Elias chose this hour. He sat on the plastic lounger, nursing a warm beer, watching the water ripple in the artificial wind from the building's ventilation system. His marriage had ended two weeks ago, but somehow he was still paying for the cable package Sarah had insisted on—three hundred channels of nothing they used to watch together while he graded papers and she scrolled through her phone.

He'd brought his father's old baseball cap with him, the one with the sweat stains that shaped a crown around the adjustable strap. His father had been dead for seven years, and Elias had spent every year since trying to become the opposite of him—stable, employed, emotionally available. Now here he was, forty-three, divorced, teaching literature to students who treated books like obstacles to be overcome rather than doorways to be walked through. The hat smelled like his father's hair tonic and the garage where they'd spent countless weekends pretending to bond over sports they both secretly hated.

Earlier that evening, he'd attempted to cook something that wasn't takeout. The spinach had sat in the vegetable drawer for so long it had turned into something biological, a science experiment in decomposition and regret. He'd thrown it away, then retrieved it, then thrown it away again—this cycle repeated three times before he finally accepted that some things, like marriages and wilted greens, reached a point where salvation was just denial with a different name.

"You're gonna fall in if you keep leaning like that."

Elias jumped. A woman stood at the pool gate, maybe thirty, holding a small dog that looked like it hated her. "Sorry," she said. "I'm Roxy. 4B. My dog needs to pee, and apparently 3 AM is his preferred schedule."

"Elias. 6A." He set his beer down. "I wasn't going to fall in."

"That's what they all say." She unlocked the gate, let the dog sniff around the potted plants. "You okay? You look like someone died."

"My marriage, actually. Same thing, depending on who you ask."

She nodded sympathetically. "My husband left me for a Pilates instructor. She has her own studio. The Pilates, not the husband." The dog lifted its leg against a chair. "Anyway, the cable guy is coming tomorrow between eight and six. If you want, you can split the installation fee. We'll both get HBO."

Elias looked at the pool, at his father's hat, at the spinach decomposing in his kitchen upstairs. "Sure," he said. "Why not."

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt something like hope. It felt suspiciously like falling forward, which was probably the same thing, depending on who you asked.