The Weight of Water

The pool at the Sunset Villas was empty at 11 PM, the water still and black as obsidian. Elena sat on the edge, legs dangling in, her iPhone screen glowing beside her on the concrete. Three unread messages from David. She'd stopped reading them hours ago.

She'd come to this resort alone—supposedly for a yoga retreat, actually because she couldn't bear another night of their carefully curated silence. The condo they'd bought together, the marriage counseling, the friends who kept asking when they'd start trying. All of it felt like a performance she'd forgotten the lines to.

Her phone buzzed again. Not David this time. Her sister: 'Mom found the old photo albums. That one from the lake house is in there. You know the one.'

Elena's breath caught. The summer she was twelve, before everything changed, before her father left and her mother learned that some people just couldn't bear the weight of other people's needs. She remembered standing at the edge of that lake, her father's hands on her shoulders, promising her that some things lasted forever.

She'd believed him then.

The pool lights flickered on automatically, sensing movement. Underwater, the blue fluorescence revealed something at the bottom—glinting, rectangular. A phone. Someone else's lost connection, someone else's discarded words. She wondered how long it had been there. Who had dropped it. What they'd been reading or writing when it slipped from their hand.

Elena stood up, water dripping from her calves. She picked up her own phone, opened David's messages without reading them, and typed: 'I think I need to stay a few more days.'

Then she deleted it. Typed again: 'I don't know if I can come back.'

Deleted that too.

She walked back to her room, phone clutched in her hand like something that might save her or sink her, both equally possible. In the morning, she'd decide. Tonight, she just needed to sleep without pretending she wasn't lonely.