Electric Water

The pool was midnight-blue when Maya slipped into the water, the cool shock of it a necessary reprieve from the heat still radiating off her iPhone where she'd left it on the deck chair. Three missed calls from David. Two unread texts. The screen had been lighting up every few minutes like tiny, silent lightning strikes across the patio table.

She began swimming laps, counting strokes to keep the thoughts at bay. One, two, three, breathe. The rhythm usually worked, usually drowned out the noise. But not tonight. Not after what he'd said at dinner—that their five years together had been 'a noble experiment, but fundamentally misaligned.' The kind of sanitized corporate bullshit he used to talk about quarterly projections. As if human hearts could be adjusted like profit margins.

Her arms ached. She'd been swimming for an hour, maybe two, since storm clouds had started gathering over the canyon. Real lightning now, actual and dangerous, flickering behind the hills in silent bursts that illuminated the bottom of the pool. She should get out. Should go inside and answer him, end it properly with dignity and composure.

Instead she floated on her back, watching the sky bruise purple and silver, thinking about how she'd once told David she felt safest in water. 'You're like a bull in a china shop with feelings,' he'd said, not unkindly, back when they still made each other laugh. 'All raw force and motion.' He'd meant she felt too much, acted too quickly, refused to temper her responses to socially acceptable levels.

Her iPhone lit up again on the table—a single word: 'Please.'

Maya treaded water as the first real drops began to fall, perfect circular disturbances multiplying across the surface. Lightning struck closer now, the thunder following almost instantly. She should go inside. She would go inside. In a minute.

The phone buzzed continuously—him calling, her letting it ring out. There was something exquisite about this suspended moment, this delicious agony of refusing to choose. The water holding her up, the sky tearing itself open, and all of it temporary, all of it passing through her like weather.

She swam to the edge and pulled herself out, dripping and shivering, and picked up the phone. Her thumb hovered over the answer button. Then, with a calmness that surprised her, she powered it off completely.

The screen went black, and in that darkness, Maya finally felt like she could breathe again.