The Animals We Become

The fight started over coffee. Not who drank the last cup, but the way Michael poured it—mechanical, eyes fixed on some middle distance where Elena no longer existed. Two years of marriage and somehow they'd become these roommates who shared a bed and Netflix subscription, but nothing else.

"You're like a zombie," she said, watching him stir cream into his mug without looking at her. "Just going through the motions."

The word struck like lightning—sudden, illuminating, destructive. Michael's jaw tightened. That afternoon, he came home early, eyes wild with a desperate clarity. He suggested the cabin. "Just us," he said. "No phones. Like before."

The drive took four hours. They spoke mostly about the weather, both pretending the morning hadn't happened. But the cabin held memories—drunk conversations on the porch, the time they'd seen a fox dart through the birch trees, Michael calling her clever and beautiful in the same breath. Now the porch sagged. Dust covered everything.

They made love that night with an intensity that felt like grief. Elena cried afterward, silent tears against his shoulder. She wanted to tell him about the coworker who'd been making eyes at her for months, not because she'd reciprocated, but because someone had finally *seen* her. She wanted to ask when they'd forgotten how to be the people who fell in love here. Instead, she slept.

She woke at 3 AM to thunder. Michael stood on the porch, watching a storm roll across the lake. Lightning fractured the sky, casting his face in sharp relief. He looked like a stranger.

"I saw a bear today," he said, when she joined him in the rain. "While you were sleeping. Down by the water. Just stood there watching me."

He turned to her, water plastering his hair to his forehead. "It looked tired. Like it was carrying something heavy."

Elena took his hand, his fingers cold. "Me too," she said. "Every single day."

The storm broke around them. Somewhere in the distance, that fox—or another—cried out. Michael pulled her close, both of them soaked through and shivering, standing on the edge of everything they'd lost and everything they might still find again.