Unplugged

The pool water was colder than she expected, but Maya kept swimming. Lap after lap, her arms cutting through the chlorinated silence, the rhythmic splash drowning out everything she couldn't face.

Her iPhone sat on the deck chair like a accusing little rectangle, lighting up every few minutes with texts from Marcus. *We need to talk. Please pick up. I'm worried.*

She'd been swimming for an hour. Her muscles burned, but the physical pain was easier than the other kind.

Maya touched the wall, breathing hard. She thought about cable — how they'd spent Saturday nights curled on the sofa, sharing a blanket, watching whatever was on. Those cable-wired evenings had felt safe, predictable. Neither of them had to perform for each other. They'd just existed together, the TV glow painting their faces in flickering blue.

Then Marcus had started working late. Really late. The cable bill went unpaid, services cut off, and suddenly there was nothing left to buffer the silence between them. That's when she'd started noticing his iPhone face-down on the table, screen lighting up with messages he wouldn't explain.

Her own iPhone buzzed again. *I'm coming over.*

Maya pushed off the wall for another lap. Something had snapped inside her yesterday — finding that receipt in his wallet, the one he couldn't explain away. Not dinner. Not flowers. A hotel room. Two towns over.

She'd been swimming ever since.

The pool's surface rippled with her movement, distorting her reflection. Maybe she could just keep swimming until she became something else — someone who didn't recognize the shape of her own loneliness.

"Maya?"

She stopped mid-stroke, water sloshing around her ears. Marcus stood at the pool's edge, silhouetted against the hotel lobby lights. He held her iPhone in one hand, screen shattered from where she'd thrown it before her first lap.

"You dropped this," he said softly. "I came to give it back. And to tell you the truth."

Maya trod water, heart pounding harder than when she'd been sprinting laps. The cable was cut. The screen was broken. But for the first time in months, she wasn't drowning anymore.

"I know," she said. "I've known for a while."

He nodded, once. The phone floated from his hand and sank slowly toward the bottom, like an anchor finally dropped.