The Animals We Keep

The thunder had been rolling for hours, a low-grade migraine in the atmosphere, before the first real strike of lightning cleaved the sky. Elena stood on the back deck of her sister's lake house, nursing a glass of merlot that had gone warm. The weekend was supposed to be solitude — a chance to decide whether to sign the divorce papers Marcus had left on the kitchen counter three weeks ago.

Instead, she was babysitting.

A massive black dog, her sister's rescue, had decided she was his new person. He pressed against her leg, seventy pounds of anxiety incarnate, whining every time the sky flashed. Inside, a siamese cat sat on the windowsill, watching the storm with bored judgment, occasionally turning to fix Elena with a look that said: "You're doing this wrong."

"You're all the same," Elena told the dog, scratching behind his ears. "Need someone to tell you everything's going to be okay."

Her phone buzzed on the patio table. Marcus. Again.

The lake was throwing off waves, whitecaps in the darkness, and she watched a figure in the water — some fool swimming in a storm, cutting through the chop with steady strokes. The lightning revealed him more clearly: Greg, from next door, the one who smiled too much at block parties and asked questions that felt too much like the beginning of something.

He emerged from the water, dripping and absurd, and waved like he'd known she was there all along.

"Crazy night for it," he called, walking up the lawn.

The dog rushed him, tail wagging furiously. Greg knelt to greet him, unbothered by the mud.

"Your sister said you might need this," he said, pulling a bottle of whiskey from his jacket pocket. "Also said you might need to hear that her husband left her for a man half his age, and she's not as okay as she pretends."

The lightning struck closer, illuminating everything: the way Greg's shirt clung to him, the raw honesty on his face, the cat now pressing against the glass, interested at last.

"I don't need saving," Elena said.

"Good." Greg grinned. "Because I've got a cat who hates me and a tattoo of a bear I got when I was twenty-two and thought I was profound. I'm a mess, Elena. I was hoping you might be too."

She laughed — really laughed, for the first time in weeks. The dog pressed between them, content now, as the storm finally broke open above them.