We Float Above What Drowns Us

Margot floated on her back in the hotel pool, chlorine burning her nostrils, watching the sunset bruise the sky purple and amber. She'd come to Sedona to save her marriage. Instead, she'd spent three days drinking watery margaritas and watching cable news in a room that smelled of someone else's vacation.

The Marriott's golden retriever, an old soul named Barnaby who belonged to the manager, lay on the concrete deck. He watched her with mild, judgmental eyes. Margot swam to the edge and rested her arms on the warm stone. "You're the only honest thing here," she told him.

She thought about Richard's pyramid scheme—sorry, "multi-level marketing opportunity"—selling vitamin supplements to people who couldn't afford them. Three years she'd watched him transform from a man who read philosophy to someone who spoke in hashtags. Last week, she'd found the receipt: two thousand dollars worth of inventory nobody wanted.

The door to her room had been left unlocked since their fight on Thursday. She'd asked him what happened to the man who wrote her poetry. He'd said poetry didn't have a residual income stream.

"Margot?" Richard's voice from the pool deck. She didn't turn. "I talked to Greg. The vitamin line is expanding. We could recoup everything by—"

She dove beneath the water. The silence was delicious, absolute. She watched the distorted sky through the lens of the pool's surface, a world made liquid and strange. When she surfaced, gasping, Richard was still there, holding two purple drinks with tiny umbrellas.

"I met someone," she said, water dripping from her eyelashes. "Online. We're meeting in Phoenix tomorrow."

Richard's face crumbled like wet sand. "Is this because of the vitamins?"

"It's because you sold everything that matters for a commission."

Barnaby stood up, stretched, and limped toward Richard, pressing his wet nose against the man's hand. Even dogs could be forgiving. Margot pulled herself from the pool, water sheeting off her body like the second skin she'd finally grown into. She didn't look back at the pyramid scheme, the vitamins, the marriage—none of it. Just walked toward the future, leaving wet footprints that evaporated before anyone could follow them.