Winter at the Desert Pool

Margaret stood at the edge of the hotel pool, her cigarette smoke curling into the dry air. The water was glass-still, unnerving for something so vast and artificial. Palm trees lined the perimeter like sentinels, their fronds rattling in the wind that smelled of chlorine and impending heartbreak.

"You're going to burn holes in that robe," David said from behind her. She didn't turn.

"It's a polyester blend, David. It doesn't burn."

"Everything burns."

The baseball tournament had been his idea—some corporate team-building exercise that neither of them wanted to attend. But the Arizona resort was booked, non-refundable, and here they were: three days of forced camaraderie with people they barely knew, sleeping in a king bed that felt suddenly too large.

"Your hair's different," he said, approaching the pool's edge. "You cut it."

"Two inches. You noticed."

"I notice things."

She turned then. David's palm rested on the wrought iron railing, his wedding ring catching the desert sun. They'd been married seventeen years. Seventeen years of gradually noticing less.

"The receptionist asked if we were on our honeymoon," she said.

"That's because they're trained to say that. It's in the hospitality handbook, right between 'compliment the jewelry' and 'pretend to remember names.'"

"She looked young."

"Everyone looks young compared to us now, Marg."

The baseball tournament started in an hour. David had bought a new glove, spent three weeks practicing in the park near their house, coming home with grass stains and boyish enthusiasm that made her chest ache with nostalgia for a version of him she hadn't seen in years.

"Maybe we shouldn't go back," she said. "To the room. Or the tournament. Or home."

"We have to go back. That's what people do."

"What if we didn't?"

David's hand moved from the railing to her shoulder, his fingers threading through the shortened layers of her hair. The heat from his palm radiated against her neck.

"I played baseball in college," he said suddenly. "Before law school, before you. I loved it. I was good at it."

"I know."

"I haven't picked up a bat in twenty years, Marg. Not once. Why do you think that is?"

She looked at the pool, at the artificial blue that wanted to be an ocean but couldn't quite commit.

"Because you became someone else," she said. "Because we did."

"Do you ever miss us?"

"The old us?"

"Any us."

Margaret crushed her cigarette into the concrete, watching the ember die.

"I miss who we were becoming," she said. "Before we stopped."

"We could start again," he said, not moving his hand from her hair. "The tournament. The pool. Palm Springs. We could start over."

"We could,"

"Will we?"

Margaret looked at his hand on her shoulder, the wedding band, the slight tremor she'd never noticed before.

"I don't know, David. I really don't know."

The tournament would start without them. The pool would remain empty. The palm trees would keep offering their inadequate shade. Some things, Margaret realized, you don't get to restart. You only get to decide whether to keep playing the game you're in, or walk off the field and let someone else take your turn at bat.