Waterlogged

The dog's leash was still on the kitchen counter where Marco had left it three months ago. Elena hadn't moved it. Some days she would stand there staring at the woven nylon, trying to summon the energy to throw it away, but her hand would always hesitate, then retreat. That was the problem with grief—it was lazy, it was heavy, it preferred inertia.

"You coming to the padel court?" David called from the driveway. His voice carried through the open window, too cheerful for the occasion. He was Marco's best friend, or at least he had been. Now he was something else—a walking reminder, a leftover connection Elena couldn't quite sever.

The country club pool glittered beyond the court, its surface broken by swimming children and the occasional splash. In July heat, the blue water called to her with seductive insistence. She wondered what it would feel like to sink beneath it, to let the water fill her lungs until the burning stopped. Not that she would. But the thought visited her daily, a casual guest she no longer bothered to apologize for.

They played in silence. David's returns were sloppy, uncharacteristic. He was grieving too, she supposed. His friend was gone. The dog was gone. And Elena—Elena was still here, a person he'd never really known without Marco as the bridge between them.

"He asked me to look out for you," David said suddenly, the ball bouncing away unreturned. "Before the accident. We were at the bar, and he said, 'If anything happens to me, make sure Elena's okay.'"

Elena stared at him. The racquet felt suddenly enormous in her hand. "Did he know something?"

"I don't know. I think he just worried." David wiped sweat from his forehead. "I've been trying to figure out what that means. What you need."

"That's not how it works," she said. "You don't get to assign me a grief chaperone."

"I know." He sighed. "But Marco's gone, and the dog's gone, and you're still here, and—I don't know. I thought we could be friends. Real ones this time."

Something in her chest cracked. The dog's leash on the counter. Marco's unspoken fear. David standing on a padel court in ninety-degree heat, trying to love her enough for two men.

"Okay," she said. "But we're doing this in the pool. I can't sweat anymore."

They walked toward the water together, and for the first time in months, Elena imagined a future where she might eventually learn to breathe again.