Electric Waters

The pool at the Desert Springs Marriott was supposed to be closed, but Elena had found the service door unlatched. She needed this—the water, the silence, the artificial stars of the hotel grounds twinkling above her like someone's idea of heaven.

She swam laps, her body slicing through the chlorinated blue, thinking about the merger. About how David had looked at her across the conference table when she'd opposed his proposal. About the way his new assistant—twenty-three, wearing Elena's old responsibilities like an ill-fitting hat—had taken notes with aggressive efficiency.

The storm had been building for hours. Elena felt it in the pressure against her skin, the way the desert air grew heavy and electric. She didn't care. Let it rain. Let the whole conference wash away.

She surfaced at the pool's edge, resting her arms on the cool concrete. That was when she saw him.

David stood at the fence, silhouette broken by the distant hotel lights. He held something in his hand.

"Security will be here in five minutes," he said. "I convinced them to wait."

"You're not supposed to be here either."

"No." He unlatched the gate and stepped onto the deck. "I'm not."

He approached the edge and sat beside her pool, legs dangling, not touching the water. In his hand: her hat, the wide-brimmed straw one she'd left in the conference room.

"You forgot this," he said.

Elena stared at him. At the hat. At the first real drops of rain beginning to fall, plinking into the pool like coins into a wishing well.

"You came all the way down here to return my hat."

"I came to tell you something," David said. "The hat was an excuse."

The sky tore open. Lightning—brilliant, searing, impossibly bright—illuminated everything: David's exhausted face, the hat in his hands, the black water of the pool, Elena's wet hair plastered against her skull. For one crystalline moment, everything was exposed.

"I'm leaving the firm," he said. "I can't work there anymore. Not after what they did to your division."

Elena's breath caught. The thunder followed, rumbling through her chest cavity like approaching trains.

"You're—you're leaving?"

"Starting my own practice." He set her hat on the deck between them, a precise, careful gesture. "I want you to come with me."

The rain came then, sudden and torrential. Elena pulled herself from the pool, water streaming from her body, shivering as she stood. David stood too, rain plastering his dress shirt to his skin.

"Yes," she said, reaching for the hat, for him. "Yes."

The lightning struck again as their hands met—electric, impossible, bright enough to blind them both.