The Storm Between Us

The storm outside our apartment window had been raging for hours, each flash of lightning illuminating the space between us on the couch—me nursing my third glass of wine, him scrolling through his iPhone with the detached focus that had become his default setting.

"David," I said, and he didn't look up. "David, please."

"What?" He finally glanced over, thumb still hovering over the screen, ready to return to whatever world existed in that glowing rectangle.

"When was the last time we really talked? Like, actually talked?"

A particularly vicious bolt of lightning split the sky, followed immediately by thunder that rattled the windows. David's phone slipped from his hand, landing screen-down on the hardwood floor. He stared at it for a long moment before reaching to retrieve it, then stopped.

"You know," he said quietly, "I was just about to text her."

The words hit me like physical force. Not because I didn't suspect—there'd been signs for months—but because he said it with such weariness, such lack of ceremony. Like he was confessing to forgetting to buy milk.

"Your phone's dead anyway," I heard myself say, gesturing to the white cable snaking across the floor, disconnected from its charging block. "Battery died on mine too. Remember when we used to lose power during storms and actually had to—what was it called—converse?"

David let out something between a laugh and a sob. "God, we're a mess."

Another flash of lightning, and in that brief illumination, I saw something I hadn't seen in years: my husband actually looking at me. Not through me, not past me. AT me.

"I still love you," he said, and the honesty in his voice was more devastating than any lie could have been. "I just don't know if I love US anymore."

The storm raged on, but for the first time in forever, we weren't ignoring it anymore. We were just two people in the dark, finally telling the truth, while our dead iPhones sat like headstones between us, their charging cables tangled like the lives we'd somehow forgotten how to live together.