The Storm Between Us

Maya sat at the edge of the hotel pool, legs submerged in water that felt suspiciously warm for November. The pool lights cast rippling reflections across her thighs, making her skin look like it belonged to a stranger. She'd been staring at her iphone for twenty minutes, waiting for a response that wasn't coming.

"You look like you're expecting the apocalypse," a voice said.

Maya looked up. A man stood nearby, maybe forty, with the kind of face that suggested he'd survived several marriages and one midlife crisis. He held an orange, already peeled, sections glistening in the pool's ambient glow.

"Worse," she said. "A divorce attorney."

He sat on the adjacent lounge chair, close enough for conversation but far enough to claim plausible deniability. "The worst storms always come from inside the house, don't they?"

Maya laughed, surprised by the sound. "He's serving me papers. Tomorrow. I found out through his instagram—he posted himself at some resort with his assistant. The woman he told me was 'like a sister.'"

The man handed her a section of orange. "Bitter things make the sweet parts taste better eventually."

She took it. His fingers brushed hers—warm, dry, deliberate. The citrus burst on her tongue, sharp and bright.

"I'm Richard, by the way."

"Maya."

"You don't have to tell me why you're really here, Maya. But I'm guessing it's not for the conference."

She looked at her iphone again. David's last message still glowed on the screen: *We need to talk. Come to the house.* That was three days ago. Now he was in Cabo.

"I came to beg," she said simply. "Pathetic, right? I was going to fly home early and surprise him. Grovel. Whatever it took. But then I saw the photos."

"Sometimes the universe saves us from our own worst instincts."

A crack of thunder shook the hotel's glass doors. Outside, lightning split the sky—a white fracture that illuminated Richard's face in stark profile. For a moment, Maya saw something raw in his expression. Recognition.

"You're married," she said.

"Separated. Seven months now." He offered another orange segment. "I keep telling myself I'm here for work. But really, I just didn't want to be home for Thanksgiving. My daughter's with her mother, and the house is too quiet without them."

"Does it get easier?"

Richard watched the pool's surface ripple in the wind. "The storm passes. But something else grows in its place. Something you didn't expect."

Maya set her iphone on the concrete between them. The screen flickered once, then went dark. She let it stay there.

"My mother always said oranges were good for heartbreak," Maya said. "Vitamin C for the soul."

Richard smiled, and in that smile, Maya saw the first genuine thing she'd encountered in months. "Well then. Better have another."

The first raindrops began to fall, plinking into the pool like coins in a fountain. Neither of them moved to leave.