What Water Remembers

The pool had that particular late-afternoon stillness, water catching the last of the golden light. I sat on the edge with my legs in the water, fully clothed, watching the ripples expand and fade. Somewhere inside the house, a glass had shattered. I knew whose voice that was.

Marcus found me twenty minutes later. He handed me an orange—perfectly round, impossibly bright against the fading day. "You should eat something," he said, his tone carrying that familiar weight between us, the one that said we both knew more than we were saying.

"I'm not hungry." I pulled the old baseball hat lower over my eyes, a ridiculous attempt at hiding when there was nowhere to hide. Not from him. Not from this.

"Sarah's looking for you."

"I know."

The sun dropped behind the trees. In the distance, I could hear them—all our friends, laughing, drinking, toasting to forever, while I sat here running through scenarios that would never happen. How many times had I almost told him? How many moments like this had we let slip through our fingers?

"You don't have to go back in there," Marcus said, sitting beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

I turned to look at him, really look at him, for what might have been the first time in ten years of friendship. The pool reflected in his eyes, and I saw my own hesitation mirrored there.

"What if I want to?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "What if I've always wanted to?"

Marcus didn't answer. He just took my hand, and we sat there as darkness fell, neither of us running anymore, both of us finally still.