The Shallow End

The apartment complex pool at 3 AM belonged only to me and the moon. I'd been coming here for weeks since Marcus left—some insomnia ritual, displacing sleep with chlorine and the hollow echo of my own strokes through water.

Tonight, though, I wasn't alone.

A man sat at the edge, jeans rolled to calves, feet submerged. He didn't turn when I surfaced, just kept staring at his own reflection like it might offer answers it had refused him all day. The pool light cast his face in bruised blue.

"Rough night?" I asked, treading water.

He startled. "Rough life, maybe." He gestured to the empty lounge chairs. "This your spot? I can go."

"There's enough room for both of us to be miserable." I swam to the edge and pulled myself up, water streaming off my arms like I'd dissolved and was reforming, drop by drop. "I'm Elena."

"David." He offered a weak smile. "I'm supposed to be at my sister's wedding tomorrow. Three states away. Instead I'm sitting in a stranger's pool in boxer-briefs because I left my packed suitcase by the front door and couldn't make myself pick it up."

"That's specific."

"She's marrying him. My ex. The one she swore she'd never speak to again after—" He cut himself off. "Family dynamics, right?"

I laughed, surprising myself. "My husband left because I couldn't have children. Said he needed a 'real family.' I found out he'd been running around with someone from his running club for months. They bonded over marathons and protein shakes."

"Jesus." David looked at me sideways. "What are you, thirty-five?"

"Thirty-two. You?"

"Twenty-nine." He splashed water, watching the ripples distort his legs. "My mother keeps sending me those multivitamin packs. 'For your health,' she says. Like pills can fix whatever's broken inside. I throw them in a drawer. Unopened."

"My doctor prescribed me vitamin D supplements after the divorce. Said I wasn't getting enough sun." I leaned back on my hands, letting my legs dangle in the water. "I take them every morning with coffee, like medication for a disease I don't have."

David considered this. "You know what's funny? We're both here. Not running. Just... sitting."

"Sometimes sitting's harder."

"Yeah." He was quiet for a long moment. "I think I'm going to the wedding."

"Really?"

"My sister's my best friend. Even if she's making a mistake, even if it hurts—I want to be there. Not for him. For her." He stood, water dripping from his feet onto the concrete. "You should come back tomorrow night. Same time."

"Why?"

"To tell me how it went." He grinned, suddenly boyish. "And maybe teach me to swim. I've never learned."

"You're kidding."

"Nearly drowned at a birthday party when I was seven. Never went back. But this..." He gestured at the dark water. "This doesn't seem so scary with someone else here."

I watched him walk toward the gate, shoulders set in something like determination. The water lapped against the pool walls, rhythmic as breathing. Somewhere in my apartment, a bottle of vitamin sat on my counter. Somewhere three states away, a bride would walk down an aisle toward the wrong man.

And tomorrow night, I'd be here at 3 AM, waiting to teach a stranger how to float.

It wasn't a beginning. But it wasn't an ending, either.