Burning Out

The lightning strike illuminated her apartment at 3:14 AM, a violent flash that exposed everything she'd been avoiding. Sarah lay awake, her face bathed in the sickly blue glow of her iPhone, thumb hovering over his contact for the thousandth time that week.

Three years together. Three years of shared coffee, shared beds, shared silences that had grown increasingly comfortable until they weren't anymore. The text message sat unsent: "I think we need to talk."

She rolled over and grabbed the bottle of vitamin D supplements from her nightstand. The doctor had recommended them last month, noting how pale she'd become, how the office job was literally draining the light from her. "You're not getting enough sun," he'd said, and she'd wanted to scream that she wasn't getting enough of anything anymore.

The morning routine was automatic: orange juice from the carton—pulp-free, because he hated pulp, even though she'd always preferred the texture. She poured it down the sink instead, watching the golden liquid spiral away, and felt something like satisfaction.

At work, her phone buzzed. "Coffee?" from Mark, the guy in accounting who always asked how her weekend was and actually seemed to want an answer. Sarah stared at the notification. The lightning had cleared the air outside. The storm had passed.

She typed back: "Yes."

The vitamin bottle went into the trash. The iPhone got a new wallpaper—something bright and abstract. And that night, when the sky cracked open again with lightning, she didn't check her phone. She just watched the storm through her window, feeling finally, painfully, entirely awake.