The Lightning Between Us

She'd been a zombie for three years. Not the walking dead kind from movies—worse. The corporate kind. The kind that shows up at 8 AM, answers emails until 7 PM, goes home, pours wine, scrolls through Instagram until her eyes burn, then does it again. Again. Again.

Her iPhone lay on the nightstand like an accusation. 11:47 PM. Another Friday night lost to the endless scroll of everyone else's life.

Lightning cracked the sky outside her window—so close the building shook. The flash illuminated everything: the takeout containers stacked on her desk, the unwashed laundry, the diploma gathering dust on the wall. She'd been twenty-eight when she stopped caring. Now she was thirty-one, and nothing had changed except the depth of her credit card debt.

Another strike. This time, the power died.

Her phone battery showed 4%. She had three choices: use it to call for help, scroll until it died, or—

Or actually feel something.

She hadn't cried since the funeral. Hadn't screamed since the promotion that came with someone else's resignation. Hadn't kissed anyone since—she couldn't remember.

The screen showed a missed call from him. From three years ago. She'd never deleted it, just swiped it away day after day, like she did everything else.

Lightning flared again, and for a second, she saw him in her mind's eye. Standing in the rain that night, saying she'd become someone he didn't recognize. That she was moving through life like she'd already left it.

He was right.

Her fingers hovered over Daniel's number. The phone buzzed—once, twice—then the screen went dark.

She sat in the darkness for what might have been minutes or hours. The storm raged outside, indifferent to her epiphany. And then she did the only thing that made sense.

She found the portable charger. She plugged in the iPhone. And she waited for the enough power to make the call she should have made three years ago.

The zombie was waking up. And it was about damn time.