Electric Afternoons

Mara arranged the vitamin supplements on her desk in a neat row—C for immunity, D for bones, B for the energy she perpetually lacked. The corporate fluorescent lights hummed above, casting everything in a sterile glow that made her skin look sallow. At 34, she felt ancient.

"You're taking those again?" Julian's voice came from the doorway. He leaned against the frame, all sharp angles and arrogant confidence, the kind of man who subsisted on espresso and hubris.

"Doctor's orders." She swallowed them with lukewarm water from the cooler down the hall. The water tasted faintly of plastic, like everything else in this building.

"Live a little, Mara. You're not dying."

She wanted to say: *That's exactly what it feels like.* But she just smiled, thin and practiced, and turned back to her spreadsheets.

They'd been sleeping together for three months—clandestine encounters in supply closets, his hand rough at her waist, his mouth tasting of mint and desperation. It was the kind of affair that felt inevitable, like decay. He was married. She was lonely. The math was simple, even if the emotions weren't.

Outside, the sky had turned a bruised purple. The first rumble of thunder vibrated through the floorboards.

"Storm's coming," Julian said, suddenly behind her. His breath hot against her neck. "Want to get out of here?"

His hand settled on her shoulder, heavy with implication. This was how it happened—the slow erosion, the compromises that felt like choices.

A flash of lightning fractured the sky, illuminating everything in stark white: the dust on her desk, the empty water glass, the ring on Julian's finger catching light like an accusation.

In that split second, something crystallized. She saw the next five years stretching out—more vitamins, more lukewarm water, more hands on her skin in rooms with locked doors. More slowly disappearing into someone else's life story.

Mara stood up. Gathered her vitamins into her purse. Picked up her water glass.

"Where are you going?" Julian asked, confused.

"Home," she said. "I'm going to take a shower and wash this day off me. Then I'm going to drink eight glasses of actual water and sleep for twelve hours."

"But—"

"And tomorrow," she continued, "I'm going to ask for a transfer. To the Seattle office. I hear it rains there."

She walked out as the next lightning strike shook the building, leaving Julian in his office full of things that would never belong to her.