What the Water Kept

I'd cut all my hair off the day Marcus left. Chopped it at the kitchen sink with kitchen shears, watching black coils collect in the drain like dead snakes. That was three months ago. Now it's just fuzz against my palm when I wake up sweating.

Tonight I'm swimming in the apartment complex pool at 2 AM because I can't sleep and because Lena told me to get out of the house. She's the only friend who stuck around after the implosion. "Go somewhere," she'd said. "Anywhere. Just don't sit there staring at your phone."

The water is cold and chemical-heavy, burning my eyes. I do laps until my arms ache, until the burn feels better than the numbness that's lived in my chest since January. Back and forth, back and forth. Counting strokes like prayer.

That's when I see the cat.

It's sitting on the concrete at the shallow end, watching me. A calico with one chewed ear, tail curled around its paws. It doesn't move when I pull myself out of the water, dripping and shivering in my ugly one-piece.

"You too?" I ask it. "Can't sleep either?"

The cat blinks slowly. I swear it looks at me with something like recognition.

I sit down beside it, wet hair plastered to my skull, and think about all the things I've lost. Not just Marcus. The version of myself who believed in forever. The friend I used to be before grief made me sharp-edged and careful. The length of my hair, which Marcus used to wrap around his fingers when he couldn't sleep.

The cat scoots closer and butts its head against my knee. Purring like a tiny engine.

"Yeah," I say, scratching behind its good ear. "I know."

We sit there together until the sky begins to gray, the cat and I, watching the water move in the pool. And for the first time in months, something in my chest loosens. Not heals—just loosens. Enough to breathe.

Lena's going to ask where I was. I'll tell her I went swimming. I won't mention the cat. Some things are meant to be kept between you and the dark.