Electric Waters

The pool was deserted when Maya slipped into the water, the iPhone sealed in a waterproof bag clutched in her left hand. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a warning she chose to ignore, much like she'd been ignoring the signs about Marcus for months.

She'd been swimming laps for twenty minutes when the first crack of lightning splintered the sky. The pool's surface transformed into a mirror of white light, revealing what she'd been too afraid to confront: a marriage hollowed out by years of silent resentment and his increasingly frequent "business trips."

Another bolt struck closer, illuminating the waterproof bag. She pulled the iPhone out, her hands trembling. Three unread messages from a number not saved in her contacts, but the context was unmistakable. "Can't wait for next weekend. Your wife suspects nothing?"

The storm broke in earnest then. Rain hammered the water's surface as Maya tread water in the center of the pool, her iPhone raised above her head like some bizarre offering to the heavens. Lightning flashed again—closer, brighter—and she understood suddenly that she was swimming in the middle of an electric field, that one strike could end everything: the pain, the confrontation, the messy unraveling of five years together.

But that was the coward's way out. She struck out for the pool's edge, each stroke a rebellion against the impulse to let nature decide her fate. By the time she hauled herself onto the concrete, the iPhone was dead—whether from water damage or something else, she couldn't tell.

Maya lay on her back as the storm moved overhead, rain washing away the tears she couldn't cry inside their apartment anymore. She would confront him tomorrow. Tonight, she would just exist, electric and alive, under the lightning that couldn't—or wouldn't—strike her down.