The Electric Hour

Marcus sat alone at the Holiday Inn pool, the water lapping against the concrete sides like a nervous heartbeat. Behind him, the sky turned that particular shade of bruised purple that meant thunder was coming. He'd checked in three hours ago, told Sarah he needed time to think, which was the coward's way of saying he'd met someone else.

The first fork of lightning splintered the sky—brilliant, terrible, the kind that made you believe in god or at least in something larger than your own mistakes. He remembered his father's voice from the baseball field when he was twelve: 'Keep your eye on the ball, Marcus. Don't blink.' That was the summer his mother left. His father had signed him up for every summer league in the county, as if structured recreation could fill the empty spaces.

Now he was forty-three, creating empty spaces of his own.

A woman emerged from the pool, swimming toward the ladder with slow, deliberate strokes. She pulled herself up, water streaming from her hair like silver. She was maybe thirty, carrying herself with the particular confidence of someone who'd already survived something terrible. She walked to the edge of the pool deck where he sat, dripping water onto the concrete.

'Storm's coming,' she said, not looking at him. She peeled an orange from her bag, the citrus scent cutting through the humidity. 'You going back inside or staying to watch the show?'

Marcus thought about the hotel room upstairs, his phone lighting up with Sarah's texts. He thought about the other woman—Elena—who'd asked him what he wanted and received only his silence in response.

'I'm watching,' he said.

She handed him a segment of orange. Her fingers were cold from the pool. 'First rule of lightning: you can't outrun it. You just have to wait it out.' She smiled then, and something in his chest opened up like a wound that had been waiting for the right moment to bleed.

He ate the orange. It was impossibly sweet. Above them, the sky tore open again, and for the first time in months, Marcus didn't look away.