Page 26 of What We Broke

He nods and retreats, leaving me to call Zara. But I don’t. Instead, I skim through her texts noting, thankfully, Raine needed to be picked up from school early to tighten her braces. An appointment they both forgot about.

I can’t say it was always easy. When you have a child so young, you’re often raising them and finding yourself along the way, and that was a reality for Zara and me.

And we navigated that well, until now.

For Raine’s sake we’re all trying to co-exist while simultaneously trying to give each other space. But it isn’t working. I miss Zara.

I miss the ease of our relationship.

I miss the before while also being unable to regret the after.

And missing Leo makes it all so much worse.

We were a shell of the happy, positive, and supportive family we used to be.

Is it unconventional? Yes.

Did it work for us? Also, yes.

Which makes the collapse of it all an even harder pill to swallow.

Looking down at my phone, I pull up my messages app and let my fingers hover above the screen, deciding if I should send Leo a text. I know it’ll go unanswered, but the die-hard romantic in me refuses to give up on him.

I’m still here, thinking of him every second of every day, and despite his constant silence and rejection, I need him to know that that won’t ever change.

* * *

Reluctantly,I drag myself out of the warm pool and welcome the cool air against my skin. While unwinding in the water has always been something I’ve done, these last few months, this pool has become my second home.

My mother used to tell anybody who listened that I was born to be in the water. When I was a baby you couldn’t get me out of the bath, and when I learned how to swim you couldn’t get me out of the pool.

I don’t swim to compete.

I don’t swim to stay fit.

I swim because when I’m in the water, everything else goes away. In the water I feel like I’m the best version of myself.

My slate is clean.

Whether it be the noise in my head, or the tension rolling through my body, the water brings peace and clarity that I am always grateful for.

Now, I was a thirty-three-year-old man whose short life had a long list of experiences. Over the years they have ebbed and flowed between high highs and some of the most crippling lows. And my relationship with the water has recently changed.

It could no longer keep me grounded.

It no longer held all the answers or soothed my body and mind while I sought them.

But it was my routine. And just like everything else in my life right now, I refuse to let it go.

I don’t care if it makes me stupid or stubborn, but everything is changing so quickly, and I’m terrified of what will be left.

Left of my marriage

Left of my family.

Left of me.

It’s another late afternoon of coming home to an empty house, and I don’t know how much longer I can do it. It doesn’t matter that he sleeps here every night; the absence between us is so profound I feel it every hour of every day.

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