The Storm After the Storm

I sat at the edge of the hotel pool at 3 AM, my legs submerged in the chlorinated water that still held the day's heat somewhere beneath its surface. Sarah was asleep in our room, or pretending to be. We'd come to Cancún for our anniversary—to repair what fifteen years of marriage and my seventy-hour workweeks had hollowed out.

Corporate restructuring, they called it. I called it becoming a zombie in a suit, shuffling between meetings I couldn't remember and spreadsheets that meant nothing to anyone. Sarah had stopped asking how my day was three years ago. She knew I wouldn't have an honest answer.

The first crack of lightning split the sky, illuminating the pool's turquoise surface like a sudden bruise. I counted—one, two, three—thunder rattled the deck chairs. Storms in the tropics didn't linger; they annihilated.

I thought about the word zombie. It had become a punchline at the office: "Don't be a zombie," they'd say during those mandatory wellness webinars. But the real walking dead were us, the ones who'd traded our curiosity for 401(k) matches and our passion for PTO accrual. I'd forgotten what I actually cared about sometime around 2012.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The pool's surface shivered with the thunder's vibrations. I watched a plastic cocktail cup bobbing in the water—someone's abandoned mojito, melting into the pool like my marriage was melting into silence.

And then I understood what I had to do. Not tomorrow, not after the trip. Now.

I stood up, water dripping from my calves, and walked back to our room. I would wake Sarah. I would tell her that I was done being a zombie, that I wanted to learn who she'd become while I was busy becoming someone else. We would swim in this pool tomorrow, really swim—when the sun was out and the lightning had passed, when the water was clear and we could finally see each other again.