What Drowns in Shallow Water

The pool was closed, but she swam anyway. Ellie had a key—leftover from when she and Mark still shared a mortgage and a life. The water hit her skin like memory: cold at first, then shocking, then inevitable. She'd been swimming laps for an hour when she saw him watching from the deck.

Mark. Standing there with that look he'd perfected years ago—the one that said he was sorry but not sorry enough to change. The cat they'd fought over custody of was nowhere to be seen. Probably dead by now, or someone else's problem.

"You still have my key," he said.

Ellie treaded water. Her limbs felt heavy, weighted down by years of compromise. "You still have my friend."

"Sarah?" He laughed, bitter and short. "She left me three months ago. Said I was like a dog that couldn't stop chasing cars."

"She wasn't wrong."

"No. She wasn't."

He sat on the edge, dipping his feet in. The pool lights cast wavering shadows across his face—the first lines of aging around his eyes, the mouth she'd once loved to kiss. Now it just looked tired.

"Remember that fox?" he asked suddenly.

Ellie's chest tightened. The fox. The night they'd driven home drunk and found it dying on the roadside, its rear half crushed but eyes still wild with instinct. They'd argued over whether to end its suffering. Ellie had held its head while Mark did what needed to be done. Afterward, they'd fucked in the backseat like they were trying to prove they were still alive.

"I remember," she said.

"I think about that night a lot. How sometimes you have to be the one to end things. Even when it hurts."

She swam to the edge, gripping the concrete until her knuckles went white. "That's not wisdom, Mark. That's just guilt wearing a philosophy."

"Maybe. But I'm done chasing cars, El. I'm done pretending I didn't drown us both."

She looked at him—really looked. The man who'd hollowed her out year by year, compromise by compromise, until she'd forgotten what it felt like to be full.

"Give me the key," she said.

He dropped it in his palm and held it out. She didn't take it. She just watched it fall, watched it sink through the blue artificial water, another thing they'd leave unfinished.

"Keep it," she said, pulling herself up the ladder. "But we're done swimming in the same deep end."