The Unsent Message

The pool was empty at 6 AM, the way Mara always liked it. She'd been **swimming** laps for twenty years, longer than her marriage had lasted. The water was her sanctuary—the only place where the noise in her head quieted to a dull, rhythmic splash.

Today, her **iPhone** glowed from the deck chair where she'd left it. Three missed calls from him. The divorce papers were signed, served, done. Yet David kept finding reasons to reach out. Forgotten passwords. Shared subscriptions. The kind padel racket they'd bought in Barcelona, still sitting in his garage somewhere.

She pulled herself from the water, droplets streaming down her arms like the years she couldn't get back.

At the market later, she reached for a **papaya**, its skin mottled with green and yellow, imperfect like everything else now. The vendor offered her an **orange** instead—"Sweeter, señorita, guaranteed." She almost laughed. Nothing was guaranteed.

That afternoon, she met Sofia for what they'd called "padel" since college, though it had never involved a racket. They sat at their usual café, the one where they'd plotted careers and marriages and babies, back when life felt like something you could plan.

"He wants to talk," Mara said, slicing into her fruit. "Says he made a mistake."

Sofia stirred her coffee, the spoon clinking against ceramic. "They always do. Eventually."

"But what if he means it?"

"What if he doesn't?"

Mara's phone buzzed again. Another notification she wouldn't check. Some messages didn't need to be read to be understood.

She thought about swimming, about how sometimes you had to dive deep to find the surface again. About how the water didn't judge you for going under, only for staying there.

"I think," Mara said, finally tasting the orange—sweet, sharp, alive—"that I'm done drowning for people who won't even learn to float."