Currents We Cannot Cross

Mara sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching the storm through the small window above it. Lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the bathroom in jagged pulses. Outside, the wind was running itself ragged against the glass.

She held an orange in her palm, its bright dimpled skin absurd against the gray devastation beyond. David had brought it home yesterday—bought it without thinking, as if the world hadn't already ended. As if she might still eat breakfast, still want things.

"The cable's out," he'd said that morning, voice flat. "Entire neighborhood's down."

They'd been speaking in sentences like that lately. Declarations of fact. The weather, the internet, the bills. Nothing that required them to be in the same room emotionally.

Mara peeled the orange. The scent released sharp and sudden, cutting through the bathroom's humid close air. She remembered swimming in Lake Michigan last summer, before everything, how David had laughed as she dove under waves and emerged with seaweed in her hair. She remembered thinking: this person, this life—I will never stop choosing them.

Now the choosing felt like something that happened to someone else.

Another flash of lightning. She counted the seconds until thunder shook the house: one, two, three. Close enough that the air tasted metallic.

She thought about the pregnancy test in the wastebasket, the single line that had unspooled everything between them. They'd been trying for two years. The fertility treatments, the hormones, the clinical mathematics of hope. And then, last week, the diagnosis that made it clear: some doors, once closed, stay closed.

David hadn't cried. He'd just held her, his body rigid against hers, and she'd felt him pulling away already—rewriting their future without consulting her.

Mara placed a section of orange in her mouth. The juice burst bitter-sweet, an act of violence almost. How dare fruit still taste like anything? How dare the world keep offering sweetness?

She stood, her legs unsteady, and caught her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back looked like someone she might have known once, in another life. A woman who swam through days assuming they would keep coming.

Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. David's footsteps in the hall, heavy, deliberate. He was probably checking the cable box again. Testing the internet that refused to return.

Mara swallowed, another piece of orange dissolving on her tongue. She could go downstairs. She could say something that mattered. She could tell him that she was still here, that they might still have a future—just not the one they'd planned.

Instead she watched lightning strike again, beautiful and merciless, and waited to see if anything would remain when the light faded.