What the Cat Saw

The cat — a stray calico with half an ear — watched from the palm fronds as Maya slipped out of the villa at 3 AM. Marcus had been asleep for hours, his breathing rhythmic and untroubled, while Maya had spent hours staring at the ceiling, weighing the ROI of her life choices.

She waded into the infinity pool, the water shockingly cold against her skin. Swimming had always been her thinking place — back in college, she'd done laps when she couldn't solve a problem. Now she was thirty-seven, and the problem was that she'd solved it too well. She'd built exactly the life she was supposed to want: the corner office, the equity package, the partner who checked every box on the spreadsheet she'd made at twenty-five.

Marcus's palm rested on the bedside table inside, his phone dark beside his wedding ring. She'd stopped wearing hers three months ago — a manufacturing defect, she'd told him. The truth was, she took it off whenever she felt like she was disappearing.

The calico meowed from the palm tree, and Maya treaded water, watching the horizon bleed into dawn. She could fly back to San Francisco in the morning, deliver the keynote, close the acquisition. Or she could keep swimming until she hit Cuba. Either way, she'd have to explain herself eventually.

Marcus appeared on the terrace, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The cat bolted up the palm trunk.

"You know," he said, sitting on the edge of the pool, "I asked for this villa because it had a desk. I thought we'd work."

Maya floated on her back, staring up at the stars beginning to fade. "I forgot how to want anything else."

"That's not true." He trailed his fingers in the water. "You want to swim to Cuba."

"You'd miss your flight."

"I'd miss more than that." He held out his hand. "Come inside. The cat's judging us."

Maya took it. Some problems, she decided, didn't need solving — just new ways of swimming through them.