The Lightning Between Us

The office lights hum at 2 AM, that familiar fluorescent buzz that makes your eyes ache. I've been staring at this spreadsheet for six hours, feeling like a zombie moving through someone else's life. Numbers blur into meaninglessness. My phone lights up — Sarah. I haven't spoken to her since the funeral three years ago, since she said something cruel about how I wasn't really grieving, just performing it for attention.

Outside, lightning fractures the sky, that sudden violent illumination that makes everything briefly, terribly clear. I remember walking her dog — this enormous, gentle beast named Bear who'd rest his head on your knee when you cried — the summer before everything fell apart. We'd sit on her fire escape drinking cheap wine, Bear's warm weight against our legs, and she'd say things like 'this is it, isn't it? this happiness?' and I'd nod, afraid to speak and break the spell.

The phone buzzes again. 'Bear died today,' the message reads. 'I just needed someone who knew him.' I think about how we became zombies to each other first — going through the motions of friendship while something vital decayed underneath. How performative grief became real grief, how loss compounds on loss.

The dog across the hall is barking at the thunder. I should go home. My own dog, Mia, is probably waiting by the door, that terrible patient waiting animals do. Instead I find myself typing: 'I'm sorry. I loved him too.'

Lightning strikes again, closer this time. The building's fire alarm chirps. My screen goes dark, and in the reflection I see my own face — tired, alive, strangely hopeful. 'Coffee?' I type. 'Now.'

Three minutes pass. An eternity. Then: 'There's that all-night place on 4th. The one with the terrible scones.'

I shut my laptop. The spreadsheet can wait. Mia can wait twenty minutes. Some things, once you've lost them, you don't get back. But sometimes, lightning illuminates what's still standing, if you're brave enough to look.