Waterweights

The hotel pool was empty at 11 PM, which was exactly what Sarah needed. She slipped into the water, letting it swallow her whole. Swimming had always been her way of unspooling—each lap a meditation she couldn't find anywhere else. But tonight, even the water couldn't wash away the boardroom's echoes.

Her colleagues were at the bar two floors up, drinking expensive scotch and talking about the upcoming merger. She'd escaped with some mumbled excuse about a headache, but the truth was simpler: she'd hit her limit of performing enthusiasm for decisions that would make them all richer and everyone else expendable.

Sarah's thoughts drifted to her cat, Buster, waiting alone in her apartment three states away. She'd hired a pet sitter, but guilt still gnawed at her. Buster had been there through the divorce, through her mother's decline, through every late night she'd crawled home feeling hollow. He never asked for explanations. He just existed, warm and solid, when she needed to remember she was alive.

Her phone buzzed on the deck chair—probably David, wondering where she was. David with his baseball analogies and his corporate cheerleading. "We're on the same team, Sarah. We need to step up to the plate." As if life were a game with clear rules, umpires, and fans who actually cared who won.

She pushed off the wall, starting another lap. The water resistance felt honest in a way her job never did. You had to work against it. No shortcuts.

After the divorce, she'd swum every morning for six months. Something about the rhythmic breathing, the way her body became useful again. Her sister had asked if she was running away. Sarah had said no, but maybe she had been. Maybe she still was.

She surfaced at the far end, gasping. A baseball game flickered on the mounted TV beyond the glass doors—some West Coast team in yellow uniforms. She'd played softball in college, briefly, before she'd learned that ambition and competition wore different disguises in the adult world.

Sarah rested her forehead against the cool tile. Tomorrow she'd nod at David's baseball metaphors. She'd craft emails about synergy and paradigm shifts. She'd pretend this was the life she'd chosen.

But tonight, in the quiet water, she allowed herself the luxury of wanting something else. Not a specific thing—just the certainty that there had to be more than this endless cycle of performative success and private exhaustion.

She climbed out, wrapped herself in a rough hotel towel, and thought about Buster. Whatever came next, at least one living thing would be genuinely glad to see her. That had to count for something.