Cables and Palm Trees

Morgan stood by the hotel pool, nursing her third gin and tonic as the Florida sunset bled across the sky. The corporate retreat had been her boss's idea—some nonsense about team bonding before the merger announcement. The same boss who'd forgotten to mention the layoffs coming next week.

"You're going to burn a hole in that pool noodle," said Lucas, settling into the adjacent lounge chair. He'd traded his suit jacket for a ridiculous straw hat he'd bought at the gift shop—his little rebellion against the dress code.

"I'm thinking about the cable," she said. "The fiber optic backbone they're laying between the two campuses. Six months of work."

"And twenty jobs gone when it's finished."

Morgan ran her palm across the condensation on her glass. "I should tell Sarah. She just bought a house."

Lucas adjusted his hat, tilting it back to study her. "You always carry everyone else's burden. That's why you're not on the list."

"The list?"

"I saw the spreadsheet on Chen's desk when I dropped off those reports. He's terrible with privacy. Your name wasn't on it."

Morgan's fingers went cold. The relief washed over her like nausea. She was safe. But Sarah—Sarah who'd covered for her when her mother was dying, Sarah who'd trained her when she started as a junior analyst—Sarah was not.

"I should tell her," she said again, weaker this time.

"She'll find out Monday."

"She deserves to know now. To plan."

Lucas reached over, his hand covering hers on the glass. "And you deserve one weekend of not being the person who saves everyone. Sometimes the most human thing is to let people have their last normal night."

Morgan looked at him—really looked—at the gray threading his temples, the way his shoulders slumped in that ridiculous hat. She wondered who he was protecting, whose name he'd seen on that list.

"When the cable goes live," she said softly, "what happens to us?"

Lucas squeezed her hand once, then released it. "We transmit. We receive. We pretend not to notice the silence in between."

Above them, a palm frond rustled in the evening breeze. In the pool, someone laughed—a bright, uncomplicated sound that seemed to belong to a different lifetime entirely.