Electric Waters

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly why Elena had chosen it. Her phone glowed with the unread text from David: *I think we should take a break. I need to find myself.*

She'd left her room when the walls started closing in, wandering down to the pool deck in her robe and bare feet. The air was thick with approaching storm, that heavy ozone scent that pressed against your skin like a warning.

She wasn't alone.

He was standing at the edge of the pool, tall and silver-haired, maybe fifty, watching something beneath the water's surface. A stranger in a rumpled dress shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, tie undone.

"Goldfish," he said, without turning. "Someone abandoned them in the decorative pond when the conference center remodeled. Three of them. Been here two days."

Elena stepped closer. The water rippled in the artificial breeze from the ventilation system. Sure enough, three bright flashes of orange-gold darted between the submerged lounge chairs.

"That's terrible," she said.

"They seem fine. Better than fine." He glanced at her then, eyes the color of storm clouds. "They keep reproducing. There were seven this morning."

*Lightning* flashed somewhere beyond the glass ceiling, flooding the pool deck with stark white light. For a second, everything was revealed—the abandoned towels on deck chairs, the watermark rings on tables, the faint silver in the man's hair at the temples.

"My wife left me," he said, as if the lightning had pulled it out of him. "Twenty-three years. She said she'd forgotten how to want anything."

"My husband thinks he needs to find himself," Elena replied, and the bitter laugh escaped before she could stop it. "Apparently, himself doesn't include me."

The stranger turned fully toward her, and in that moment, the *pool* between them felt less like water and more like understanding. Something electric and dangerous passed between them—not attraction, exactly, but recognition. The sharp ache of being seen by someone who had nothing left to lose.

"You know what's funny?" he said, gesturing toward the water. "Those fish probably have better lives now. Nobody expected them to survive, so they're just... living."

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The thunder followed three seconds later.

"I'm Elena," she said.

"Richard." He didn't offer his hand. "We should probably go inside. Real storm's coming."

They stood there anyway as the rain began to hammer against the glass roof, drowning out everything else. Watching the goldfish swim endless circles in their abandoned pool, making something like freedom out of confinement, while outside, the lightning continued to fall.