What We Bear

Margot stood at the edge of the hotel pool at midnight, her bare feet gripping the cool concrete. The water was still, dark as a mirror, reflecting nothing but the void above. She'd flown three thousand miles for this wedding—her college best friend's third—and somewhere between the open bar and the cheap champagne, she'd realized she didn't know the bride anymore.

Then she saw Elena emerge from the pool house, her dark hair plastered to her face, mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks.

"You're supposed to be on your honeymoon," Margot said, not moving.

Elena wrapped a towel around herself, shivering. "He called someone else's name. Again."

The air between them thickened with fifteen years of unsaid things—the friend Margot had once been, the one who'd held Elena's hair while she threw up after bad breakups, who'd helped her study for the bar, who'd slowly, imperceptibly, been replaced by someone more polished, more convenient. Someone Elena could bear.

"You always knew," Elena said quietly. "About the first one. About all of them."

Margot thought about the weight she'd carried, the secrets she'd kept. The bear of a burden she should have laid down years ago. "I thought you'd choose yourself eventually."

Elena laughed, dark and bitter. "Self-preservation feels like cowardice until you're the one drowning."

She stepped into the pool without ceremony, fully clothed, sinking beneath the surface. Margot watched the water close over her head, counted to ten, twenty. When Elena broke the surface again, gasping, something in her face had changed—hardened, finally.

"I'm not going back," she said.

Margot nodded once, turned toward the hotel. "Good."

The pool stayed empty behind her, but for the first time in years, the water wasn't dark anymore. Just water.