Electric Waters

The storm was rolling in across the valley when Elena found me by the pool, nursing my third gin and tonic. The papaya on the table beside me had gone warm and soft in the humidity, its flesh exposed like a wound.

"You're going to miss your flight," she said, not quite meeting my eyes. The former friend who'd flown across the country to watch me destroy my marriage.

"There's still time."

She sat on the lounge chair next to mine, close enough that I could smell her perfume—sandalwood and rain. The same perfume she'd worn the night I met her, the night I'd chosen Richard over her, or thought I had. The distinctions had blurred over years of hotel bars and borrowed keys.

"Richard doesn't know about us, does he?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"He thinks we're old friends from college."

"Are we?"

The first lightning strike flashed somewhere behind the hills, turning the swimming pool into a sheet of silver. A storm was coming, yes, but not fast enough. Not fast enough to outrun what I'd done, what we'd done across three cities and five years of careful lies.

"I brought you something," Elena said, reaching into her bag. She pulled out a papaya, whole and perfect. "Remember those mornings in Mexico? Before everything?"

Before I'd married a man who loved me enough not to ask questions. Before she'd decided she couldn't live with the secret anymore.

"I remember," I said. "I remember thinking we could have it all. The husband, the friend, the life we'd planned."

"And now?"

"Now I know there's no having it all. Only choosing what you can live with losing."

The rain started—fat, warm drops that sizzled against the pool's surface. Elena stood up, her silhouette stark against the darkening sky.

"My flight's in two hours," she said. "I wanted you to know: I'm not doing this anymore. The flights, the hotels, the pretending. I met someone."

The words hit harder than the storm that was breaking now, lightning cracking open the sky.

"Good," I heard myself say. "That's—really good, Elena."

She left the papaya on the table. I watched her walk away, not turning back, and when the first true bolt of lightning shattered the darkness, I finally let myself cry—great, gutting sobs that felt like swimming to the surface after holding my breath for five years. The papaya sat beside me, innocent and complete, and somewhere in the distance, my husband was waiting for me to come home.

I picked up my phone and booked the next flight to anywhere else.