Lightning Over the Chlorine
The orange sunset painted the sky like bruised fruit as I sat by the pool, knees pulled to my chest. Summer before sophomore year and everything felt different, even though nothing had actually changed yet.
"You coming in or what?" Marcus called, already doing cannonballs off the diving board. We'd been best friend since kindergarten, before he got all tall and varsity-jacket cute, and I stayed... me.
"In a minute," I said, though I had zero intention of getting my hair wet. The baseball team was having their end-of-season party at the other end of the pool, and I was trying to look casual while definitely not staring at Tyler, who'd finally noticed my existence this week.
Thunder rumbled. The lifeguard blew his whistle—everyone out.
"Great," Marcus muttered, shaking water from his hair like a golden retriever. "Tyler's leaving anyway."
"What? No I wasn't—"
"Bro, it's obvious." He flopped onto the chair next to mine, smelling like chlorine and coconut sunscreen. "You've been making heart eyes at him since May. When are you gonna realize he's not worth it?"
Before I could clap back, lightning shattered the sky—purple-white arteries branching through the darkening clouds. The pool glowed eerie blue for a split second.
"Whoa," we both said.
Then the sky opened up. We scrambled under the picnic shelter, shoulder to shoulder in the sudden downpour. Marcus's orange swim trunks were neon-bright against the gray rain. Everyone else had bolted for their cars, but we were stuck.
"Your mom's gonna kill us if we run home in this," I laughed.
"Worth it," he said, and pushed me into the rain.
We ran through it, hair plastered to our faces, breathless and laughing like idiots. The lightning flashed again, illuminating everything in strobe-light bursts. And in that weird electric moment, I looked at Marcus—really looked at him—and realized I'd been looking at the wrong person all summer.
Sometimes the lightning doesn't destroy everything. Sometimes it just shows you what's been there the whole time.