Currents

The golden retriever lay between them on the hotel bed, a familiar weight that had once felt like comfort and now felt like accusation. Sarah and Mark hadn't spoken since he'd packed his suitcase three hours ago. The storm outside matched the silence inside—thunder rattling the windows, rain streaking the glass like mascara on a crying face.

"I'm going for a swim," Sarah said, though it was midnight and the hotel pool would be closed.

"Don't," Mark said. "It's dangerous. There's lightning."

She laughed, a sound that surprised them both. "Everything's dangerous now, isn't it?"

She left him there with the dog, whose name was Cooper—a name they'd chosen together on their third date, drunk on whiskey and optimism. Downstairs, the pool area was deserted, lit only by the storm's flickering illumination. The water was still, dark as a mirror.

Sarah undressed slowly, folding each garment with the precision she used to avoid feeling. When she slipped into the pool, the cold shocked her system, and for a moment she couldn't breathe. Then she began swimming—lap after lap, her strokes rhythmic and punishing. She thought about how they'd bought Cooper two years ago when Mark announced he wanted children eventually. How the dog had been practice. How neither of them was ready.

Lightning flashed, and in its brief illumination she saw Mark standing at the pool's edge, fully clothed, Cooper beside him on a leash.

"Come back," he said.

"Why?"

"Because Cooper needs you. Because I need you. Because I'm terrified of losing you."

She treaded water in the deep end, suspended between surfaces. "I'm already gone, Mark. I have been for months."

The storm broke then—rain hammering the roof, the sky splitting open with lightning so bright it turned everything white. In that flash, she saw everything they'd been and could have been. She swam to the edge, pulled herself from the water, and stood dripping before him.

"Take care of Cooper," she said, pressing her wet body against him for the last time. "He loves you more than I do."

She walked past them both, leaving wet footprints on the concrete, understanding finally that some things—love, regret, the particular weight of a golden retriever's head on your chest—could be carried or released, but never both.