Electric Memory

The storm had been brewing for hours, the kind of heavy summer afternoon that made the air feel thick enough to chew. Elena stood at the edge of the pool, her ex-husband's backyard still strange to her after three years of divorce. The water was glass-smooth, reflecting the darkening sky.

"You're going to miss it," Marcus said, appearing behind her with two drinks. He'd aged well — irritatingly so. The crow's feet around his eyes only made him look more distinguished, while she felt like she'd been eroding.

"Miss what?"

"The storm. Remember how we used to watch them from the apartment?" He set the glasses down on the patio table. "Before we could afford a house with a pool."

Lightning flashed across the horizon, a jagged white scar against the purple-gray clouds. Elena remembered those years in the studio apartment, the futon they'd bought from a Craigslist stranger who smelled like cats, the way they'd eaten dinner on the floor because they couldn't afford a table. They'd been poor and desperate and sometimes violently happy.

"I bought a goldfish yesterday," she said, surprising herself. She hadn't intended to tell him. "For my apartment. It seemed like something a normal person would have. A living thing that depends on you."

Marcus studied her. "And?"

"It died this morning. I think I overfed it. Or maybe the water was wrong. The pet store guy gave me this whole speech about pH levels and conditioning, but honestly, Marcus, it's a fish. How complicated could it be?" She laughed, a sharp humorless sound. "But apparently, complicated enough that I killed it within twenty-four hours."

"You couldn't keep a plant alive either," he said softly. "Remember the succulent?"

"I remember everything." She turned toward him, and in that moment, lightning struck closer, illuminating his face with ghostly clarity. "I remember that you stopped kissing me first. I remember that you bought this house because I said I wanted somewhere with a pool, and then you filled it with women who weren't me. I remember that you left your socks everywhere, and I still haven't been able to buy socks that feel right on my feet because I got so used to wearing yours."

The first drops of rain began to fall, darkening the concrete around the pool's edge.

"I sold the house," Marcus said.

Elena blinked. "What?"

"I'm selling it. Closing next week. I'm moving to Denver. My sister's been asking me to come out there for years, and..." He gestured vaguely at the pool, at the house, at their life together. "There's nothing keeping me here."

"But you loved this pool. You spent half your marriage in it."

"I loved the idea of what it was supposed to be," he said. "The perfect house. The perfect life. But Elena —" lightning cracked directly overhead now, thunder shaking the patio furniture "— neither of us was happy. Not really. Not since before we even moved in."

She thought about the goldfish, floating belly-up in its bowl that morning. How she'd stared at it for twenty minutes, paralyzed by the crushing certainty that some part of her was broken, that she couldn't keep even the simplest things alive.

"I'm broken too," she said.

"No." He stepped closer, not touching her, just close enough that she could smell his cologne, cedar and something metallic. "You're not broken, El. You're just... you require a very specific kind of care. Like that fish. You need the right conditions. And I —" he paused, and for the first time, she saw his own regret laid bare "—I wasn't giving them to you."

The rain was coming down hard now, plastering her hair to her face, ruining her dress. She didn't care.

"Do you think," she asked, speaking over the thunder, "that somewhere, in some version of reality, we figured it out? That there's a timeline where we're old and grey and still sitting by this pool, watching storms together?"

Marcus smiled sadly. "I hope so. I really hope that version of us is happy."

They stood there as the sky opened up, two people who had promised each other forever, finally letting go in the rain.