Electric Waters

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, the water motionless under amber security lights. Sarah sat on the edge, legs submerged to the knees, while Marcus stood at the railing, nursing a whiskey he'd stolen from the mini-bar. They were supposed to be celebrating his promotion—instead, they'd spent the evening not speaking.

"Remember when we used to play baseball?" Marcus said suddenly, the word foreign in his mouth after years of corporate vocabulary. "That summer in the park, you hit that ball so hard it broke a car window."

"I was running from something," Sarah said, not looking at him. "Even then."

The air grew heavy, charged with something more than humidity. A storm was rolling in off the ocean, the kind that makes hair stand on end. Marcus watched her reflection in the dark water—how still she was, like something submerged.

"We're still playing games," he said. "Just different ones now."

Lightning fractured the sky, a white scar that illuminated everything for one terrible second: Sarah's mascara-streaked face, his own trembling hand, the concentric ripples spreading across the pool's surface where something had broken the tension.

"I met someone," she said. The words came so quietly he almost missed them. "Six months ago. At that conference in Chicago."

Another flash, closer this time. The pool's surface turned momentarily violent.

Marcus set down his glass. "Were you going to tell me?"

"I don't know." She pulled her legs from the water, droplets falling like time. "I think I was waiting for lightning to strike, one way or the other."

Thunder rattled the hotel windows. The storm had arrived, and with it, the end of whatever they'd been pretending to have for the past three years. Marcus found himself running—not away, but toward the pool's edge, toward her, toward the truth that had been submerged between them for too long.

"We could start over," he said, knowing even as he spoke that it was the wrong thing to say. The wrong play.

Sarah laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "Marcus, we're not even at bat anymore. We've been benched for seasons."

Rain began to fall, warm and relentless, mixing with the pool water on her skin. They stood there as the storm broke around them, two people who had forgotten how to swim, learning that some things—the really important ones—can't be taught. They can only be survived.