Currents in the Rain

I was already three hours into overtime when the ceiling started weeping. Not weeping, weeping. That's how the building super described it when I called him at midnight, sounding like a disappointed parent. The water was tracing a slow path down the wall behind the server rack, ghosting over the tangle of cable I'd been fighting all week.

"You're still here?" It was Sarah, leaning against my doorframe, holding two coffees from the machine that made everything taste like regret and burnt plastic. I hadn't seen her since the Christmas party, since the incident that everyone pretended not to remember. The incident where she'd kissed me and then spent twenty minutes explaining why she couldn't.

"Cable migration," I said. "Network's been a zombie since Monday. I'm just trying to put it out of its misery."

She handed me a coffee. Her fingers were cold. The building's heat had died hours ago. "You look like shit."

"Running on four hours of sleep and spite."

"I heard you signed up for that marathon." She didn't ask it like a question. "Since when do you run?"

Since you made it clear you were leaving for Seattle. Since I needed something to do at 4 AM when the silence got too loud. But I said, "Since I realized I could either run or start drinking before noon. My liver voted for running."

The water found an electrical socket somewhere above us. Every light on the floor died at once. We were plunged into darkness lit only by the server LEDs and the city filtering through the rain-streaked windows.

"I'm not going," she said into the dark.

My chest did something complicated. "What?"

"Seattle. I was going to tell you tonight, actually. That's why I came back. But then I found you here, drowning in cable and overtime, and I realized—I've been running away from the wrong thing."

The rain intensified outside, water drumming against the glass like it was trying to tell us something. Somewhere in the building, an alarm started chirping.

"You know what's funny?" I set down the coffee. "I used to think if I fixed enough systems, ran enough miles, made myself useful enough, you'd—" I stopped. "This is the wrong conversation to have in a flooded office at midnight."

"It's the perfect conversation." She moved closer. "We're both just zombies, Mark. Going through the motions, waiting for something to wake us up. I think maybe—"

The sprinkler system chose that moment to activate. We scrambled toward the door, laughing despite everything, running through the sudden artificial rain, leaving our coffees and half-finished sentences behind us.

Some connections are easier to make than others.