Chlorine and Thunder

The pool at the Coral Sands Resort was empty, save for Marcus doing his laps. Sarah watched from their balcony, nursing a glass of warm chardonnay. He'd been obsessed with his health since the scare last winter—swimming every morning at dawn, choking down vitamin supplements with breakfast, lecturing her about the importance of leafy greens. She'd started hiding spinach in smoothies just to avoid another conversation about antioxidants.

She thought about the woman he'd been texting. Elena, from accounting. She'd seen the messages flash across his phone: lightning strike interpretations of innocent work correspondence, or maybe she was losing her mind.

A storm was brewing. The sky had turned that particular bruised purple that precedes violence. Marcus was still swimming, his stroke rhythmic, oblivious. Or maybe he just didn't care anymore.

They'd come here to reconnect. That was the party line, anyway. Three days in paradise to remember why they'd chosen each other. Instead, he swam and she drank and the silence between them grew teeth.

The first crack of lightning split the sky—a stark white fracture, followed immediately by thunder that shook the balcony railing. Marcus surfaced, gasping, just as the resort's pool alarm began to scream.

Sarah watched him scramble out of the water, grabbing his towel. He looked up at their room and saw her standing there. For a moment, he didn't move. Rain began to fall, hard and sudden, plastering his hair to his skull, matting his chest hair.

He raised a hand in what might have been a wave. Or surrender.

Sarah set down her glass. The storm had broken, finally. Something would have to happen now—conversation, confrontation, maybe just crying in the rain like a cliché. But something.

She walked to the door and headed down to meet him, leaving the empty glass behind. Lightning struck somewhere out at sea, illuminating the whole world for one brilliant, terrible second before plunging them back into the dark.