The Tether

The cable guy was late, which felt appropriate. Everything in Sarah's life had been running behind schedule lately—her career, her emotional maturity, this divorce.

She sat by the pool, legs dangling in the water, watching her iPhone screen light up with texts from David. Are you really doing this? Can we talk? The battery was at 12%, dying just like their ten-year marriage had—slowly, then all at once.

They'd met at a baseball game. He'd caught a foul ball, handed it to her with that crooked grin that used to make her stomach flip. Now she wondered if he'd been smiling at someone in the stands behind her even then.

The pool had been David's idea. Something about lifestyle, about the kind of people they were becoming. Sarah mostly used it for floating, for the weightlessness that contrasted so sharply with the heaviness in her chest. She wasn't swimming laps anymore. Just drifting.

"Ma'am?" The cable guy stood at the back gate, holding a coil of black wire like a dead snake. "Here to disconnect?"

She nodded, water dripping from her calves onto the concrete. David had insisted on keeping the cable after he moved out. One more thing to tie them together, one more bill they'd split, one more reason to call each other.

Until she found the texts on his iPhone. Not cheating—worse, somehow. He'd been secretly applying for jobs in cities where she'd refused to live, planning a future that didn't include her. The cowardice of it still stung more than the betrayal.

The cable guy worked efficiently, unscrewing connections, winding up the black cord. Sarah watched and thought about how easy it was to sever connections. How effortless it was, really, to cut the cord.

Her phone buzzed one last time before the screen went black. I'll come over. We can figure this out.

She didn't respond. Instead she slipped into the pool, weightless at last, and watched the cable guy walk away with the tangled black wire that had held them together for far too long.