Under Orange Light

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly what Elena needed. She'd discovered the text messages three hours ago—simple, devastating things that made her stomach fold in on itself. Now she stood at the pool's edge in her black one-piece, watching the **water** ripple softly beneath the orange underwater lights.

She hadn't gone swimming since college, but something about the sterile quiet of this space called to her. The air smelled faintly of chlorine and lemon cleaning products. She slipped into the pool, the cool shock wrapping around her like a second skin.

Her first laps were jagged, desperate. She sliced through the water with too much force, trying to outpace the images in her mind: David's phone lighting up across the dinner table, the way he'd angled it away from her, the sudden specificity of his recent加班 (overtime) excuses.

By her tenth lap, her body found its rhythm. The repetition became hypnotic—stroke, breathe, kick, turn. The orange glow from below transformed everything, making the water feel otherworldly, like she was swimming through some suspended moment between what her marriage had been and whatever it would become.

She thought about the last time she and David had been truly happy, really seen each other. That trip to Barcelona, standing on their balcony at midnight, sharing a singular focus. She'd been wearing that orange sundress he loved. The memory made her chest ache.

Elena stopped swimming and floated on her back, staring up at the ceiling. The water held her up. Tomorrow she would confront him. Or maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she would just keep swimming through this strange orange-limbo until her legs gave out, until the choices became clearer, until she knew whether she was drowning or learning to breathe in a new element.

For now, she exhaled and watched her breath ripple toward the surface, a small and certain thing in all this uncertainty.