Swimming in Lightning

The padel court feels suffocating today, the glass walls trapping us inside this final moment of what we were. Mark serves, and the orange ball sails toward me—a bright flame against the darkening sky, the same impossible color of the sunset we watched from our balcony three years ago, the night he told me he loved me and I believed him.

He's getting married in six weeks. We're playing what he called "one last game" before his wedding, but really it's one last autopsy of us.

"You're playing like you're underwater," he says, missing an easy return. The ball bounces away, toward the fence.

"Maybe I am." The words slip out before I can stop them. I haven't told him about the swimming lessons. About how I'm finally learning to move through water without panic, how I'm learning to trust myself to stay afloat instead of always reaching for someone else to keep me from sinking.

Thunder rumbles overhead. I should go. But I stay rooted, watching rain streak down the glass walls, distorting his face into something almost unrecognizable—or maybe showing me what he was all along.

"Remember that night in Barcelona?" he asks suddenly, his voice thick with nostalgia. "When we went swimming in the sea at midnight, and you got scared of the dark water?"

I remember. I remember him laughing when I panicked, then wrapping me in a towel and carrying me back to the hotel like a child. I remember feeling safe, but also small. I remember wondering why he never understood that the fear wasn't the water—it was that I was learning I couldn't trust myself in deep places, literal or otherwise.

Lightning forks across the sky, sudden and violent, briefly illuminating the court in stark white. Through the glass walls, rain now hammers down in sheets. On the court, the orange ball rests forgotten near my feet.

"I don't want to play anymore," I say, surprised by how calm my voice sounds.

"You never did," he replies, something hardening in his expression. "You never wanted to fight for us."

I pick up the orange ball, studying its surface. "That's not true. I fought for myself. You just didn't like that I finally stopped fighting for both of us."

Rain pounds the roof now. Water begins to pool at the court's edges. Lightning flashes again, closer, the crack-boom of thunder nearly simultaneous. I walk to the glass door, push it open. Rain instantly soaks my shirt, my hair.

"You're going out there?" he calls. "It's pouring."

"Yes." I step into the deluge. "I'm going swimming."

I've spent my life learning to swim through other people's emotions. But today, I choose to walk through my own storm, one step at a time. The rain falls like forgiveness, washing away the boy I loved and the girl I was.

Behind me, through the glass, he's just a silhouette now. I turn away from the padel court, from the orange ball on the floor, from all the games I let myself lose.

The parking lot is flooding, water rising around my ankles, then my calves. I keep walking. Lightning arcs above me, a crown of fire, and for the first time in my life, I don't run for cover. I stand in the rain, lifting my face to the storm, and finally, finally, learn what it means to be afraid and keep moving forward anyway.

Some storms aren't meant to be weathered together. Some swimming, you have to do alone.