The Lightning Strike at Midnight

I'd been walking through my days like a zombie for three years since David died — moving, speaking, even smiling when required, but somewhere inside, the essential part of me had quietly packed its bags and left without forwarding address. The office noticed nothing. My performance reviews still said 'exceeds expectations,' which seemed like a cruel joke given how thoroughly I'd failed to exceed expectations at the only thing that actually mattered.

Then came the corporate retreat in Palm Springs, where I found myself at the hotel pool at midnight, unable to sleep, while lightning forked across the desert sky in silent pulses. The water called to me, so I slipped into the pool, swimming laps in the illuminated darkness, the only person in the world. Or so I thought.

'Mind if I join?'

I tread water as Marcus from Accounting appeared at the pool's edge. He'd been wearing the same ridiculous cowboy hat all week — a pointed contrast to our corporate khakis and polos. 'Everyone thinks I brought it as a joke,' he said, setting it on a lounge chair. 'Truth is, I haven't taken it off since my father's funeral. It was his.'

He swam beside me in silence for twenty minutes while lightning continued its electric dance overhead. Then he said, 'My wife left me two months ago. Said she couldn't compete with a ghost anymore.'

I told him about David. About the hospital bed and the final breath and the hollow life that followed. We tread water in the deep end as understanding passed between us — two people tired of drowning on dry land.

'The bull sh*t we tell ourselves,' Marcus said finally. 'That we're protecting ourselves by staying numb. Really, we're just already dead.'

He kissed me then, or I kissed him — it stopped mattering the moment our lips met. There was lightning in that touch, something terrifying and alive rushing through veins I'd thought permanently cold. We made love in his room with the cowboy hat hanging from the bedpost, and for the first time in three years, I didn't feel like I was haunting my own body.

Morning would bring complications. Ethics, HR, the messiness of beginning something in the middle of everything else. But floating in that pool at midnight, I'd remembered something crucial: the dead don't swim. And I'd been swimming for hours.