Storm Season

The first flash of lightning turned the kitchen white, and in that brief illumination, Sarah saw what she'd been pretending not to see for months: Marcus's phone face-up on the counter, a notification glowing like an accusation. He'd stopped hiding them.

You don't eat oranges anymore, she thought, staring at the forgotten fruit bowl where three oranges had slowly been softening into rot since February. Marcus used to peel them for her every Sunday morning, his fingers stained with juice, the scent hanging in the air like a promise they both pretended to remember.

Another flash. Thunder shook the windowpane.

"We should talk," he said from the doorway, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he asked her to marry him eight years ago in that cheap restaurant with the flickering candle. She'd been wearing orange that night—a dress she'd never worn again because he'd told her it made her look like sunshine, and some part of her had wanted to stay his sunshine forever.

"I've been running," she said instead, and the words surprised them both. "Running from this conversation, running from the credit card statements, running from the way you stopped looking at me like I'm the only person in the room."

The storm outside was nothing compared to what had been building between them. Years of disappointment layered like sediment, each small hurt settling into the next until you couldn't see where one ended and another began. The orange peels. The canceled vacation. The Christmas he spent "working late" and came home smelling like someone else's perfume.

Marcus crossed the room and reached for her hand. His palm was sweating. "Sarah—"

"Don't." She pulled away. "Just tell me why her."

The question hung between them as the third lightning bolt fractured the sky, illuminating everything she didn't want to see: the way his eyes had been looking elsewhere for a long time, the way she'd chosen blindness over truth, the way loving someone sometimes means staying long after you should have left.

Outside, the rain began to fall.