Electric at Midnight

The outdoor pool at midnight was her sanctuary—a place where Maya could wash away the exhaustion of 14-hour days at the hospital, where the deaths and diagnoses and desperate families couldn't follow her into the dark water. She'd been swimming laps for forty minutes when the storm broke.

First came the lightning—a white scar across the sky, illuminating the pool deck where someone stood watching her. Maya's stroke faltered. She recognized him immediately.

Elias. The marriage she'd left three years ago like a house she'd slowly stopped inhabiting, room by room, until she was just haunting it, a ghost in her own life. A zombie going through motions.

She surfaced, treading water. "What are you doing here?"

"I heard about your mother," he said, voice low over the rumble of thunder. "I'm sorry."

Another flash of lightning. In its brief illumination, she saw his face—gaunt, older. The man she'd once loved so desperately it felt like drowning.

"She died two weeks ago, Elias."

"I know. I just—I didn't know how to reach you. You left everything behind."

Maya laughed, a hollow sound. "I left? You stopped looking at me years before I walked out. We were two people sharing a bed, eating dinner, watching television—neither one really there. Just going through the motions like the walking dead."

The rain started, warm and heavy, distorting the surface between them. She swam to the edge, pulled herself up. Water streamed from her hair, her skin.

"I still love you," he said simply.

The words hit her like physical force. Maya stood there, rain and pool water mingling on her skin, suddenly unable to remember why she'd ever thought feeling nothing was better than this—painful, messy, alive.

"You're going to get soaked," she said, heart hammering in a way that had nothing to do with the storm.

Elias stepped toward her through the rain. "I've been drowning since you left, Maya."

She reached for his hand, their fingers interlacing like they used to, before everything. The lightning flashed again, and for the first time in three years, she didn't look away.