Electrical Currents

Marcus stood at the edge of the padel court, racket dangling from his grip like a dead thing. The corporate retreat had been his boss's idea—team building, they'd called it. But Marcus felt less like a team member and more like a zombie stumbling through someone else's life.

Three weeks ago, his position had been eliminated. Not fired, exactly—just "phased out." The bull market had turned, and Marcus with it. Now he was consulting part-time, a liminal state that felt worse than outright dismissal.

"You coming?" Sarah called from across the court. She was the new senior director, thirty-two to his forty-five, brilliant in ways that made his stomach hurt. They'd been sleeping together for two months, a secret that felt heavier with each encounter.

He stepped onto the court. The game began, but his heart wasn't in it. Sarah moved like lightning, her racket flashing through the humid air, while Marcus's responses grew sluggish, delayed.

Later, they found themselves alone in the resort's kitchen, raiding the refrigerator for leftovers. Marcus stared at a container of wilting spinach. "Remember when we thought eating right meant we'd live forever?"

Sarah leaned against the counter. "I don't want to live forever. I just want to feel alive."

The words hit him like physical blows. That was it, wasn't it? He'd been moving through grief like a man underwater, watching the surface recede. The job, the uncertain future—those weren't the problem. The problem was that he'd forgotten how to want anything.

"I'm going to do it," he said suddenly. "Start my own firm. The consultancy wasn't supposed to be a bridge to nowhere."

Sarah smiled, and for the first time that week, it reached her eyes. "The bull you've been feeding yourself—that you're too old to start over—no one believes that but you."

Lightning split the sky beyond the kitchen window, illuminating everything for a heartbeat: the spinach, Sarah's exhausted face, his own reflection in the glass—a man who looked less dead than he had an hour ago.

"Play another match?" she asked.

Marcus set the spinach on the counter. "Yes."