Lightning Over Silent Tables

Elena sat across from Marcus in their favorite restaurant, watching him push penne around his plate. For six months, he'd been moving through life like a zombie - hollowed out by the merger at the firm, the endless meetings that stretched into evenings, the way work had systematically drained him of everything that used to make him him.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, and for a split second, she saw him clearly in the flash: the silver threading his dark hair at the temples, the fine lines she'd somehow stopped noticing around his eyes, the way his gaze had gone flat and distant. She'd found one of his hairs on her pillow this morning, silver and coarse against the white linen, and it had made her realize how much time had passed while they were both too busy becoming people they didn't recognize.

"Sometimes I feel like we're already dead," she said, setting down her wineglass. Marcus looked up, really looked at her, for the first time in weeks.

The storm broke then, rain hammering the glass, and in the flash of another lightning strike, Elena saw something flicker in his eyes - fear, or maybe recognition. He reached across the table, his fingers finding hers.

"I don't want to be a zombie," he said quietly. "I just forgot how to be anything else."

They left before dessert. Outside in the rain, Elena pulled him to her, her hands in his wet hair, and for the first time in months, Marcus didn't feel like something that had been hollowed out by corporate obedience. The lightning kept fracturing the sky above them, illuminating everything they'd been too afraid to see - the distance between them, the exhaustion, the way they'd both let life happen to them instead of choosing it.

"Your hair's wet," she said, smoothing it back from his forehead.

"So's yours," he replied, and kissed her in the rain while the lightning flashed again, as if the sky itself was trying to show them what they'd almost lost.