Why We Stay

Margaret stood at the edge of the hotel pool at 2 AM, the water still and black as a pupil. Her room service spinach salad sat untouched on the balcony table above—she'd ordered it because David used to say greens made her radiant. Now the wilted leaves mocked her from their white ceramic bowl, like everything else in their thirty years together.

She ran her fingers through her hair. Gray had been invading the copper for a decade, but David had stopped noticing somewhere around year twenty-seven, around the time he'd stopped noticing her new dresses, her opinions, the way she held her breath when he walked into a room.

The pool lights flickered on, triggered by motion sensors. That's when she saw him—her husband, standing at the opposite edge, fully dressed in his suit from the negotiation meetings that had brought them to this conference. His hair was disheveled, tie undone. He looked like a stranger she'd once loved desperately.

"You're thinking about leaving," he said. Not a question.

"You knew I would be."

"The spinach." He gestured toward her balcony. "You always order it when you're making escape plans. Remember Paris?"

She remembered. They'd been twenty-five, poor, and she'd threatened to return to America after a fight. He'd found her eating spinach salad in a café near the Eiffel Tower, and they'd talked until dawn, and she'd stayed.

"I'm not twenty-five anymore, David."

"Neither am I." He stepped closer. "I have spinach in my teeth, don't I?"

She laughed despite everything. "Yes."

"Fix it for me? Like you used to?"

Margaret waded into the pool, fully clothed, the water cold around her calves, then her waist. When she reached him, she ran her thumb along his gum line. His skin was still familiar.

"There," she said. "Perfect."

"Stay," he whispered. "Let's figure out what comes next. Together."

"There might not be anything next."

"Then we figure out how to end it together."

The pool lights timed out, plunging them into darkness. She stood there waist-deep in chlorinated water, her thumb stained with her husband's saliva, and realized she wasn't ready to walk away from a man who still knew exactly how to make her stay.