The Voltage Between Us

Elena stood on the **padel** court, sweat stinging her eyes as she watched her husband Marcus serve. His back was to her, the sunlight catching the gray threading through his dark hair. They'd been playing together every Sunday for seven years, just like they'd been taking their morning **vitamin** supplements together, side by side at the bathroom counter, silent routines that had somehow become the architecture of their marriage.

She missed the return. The ball sailed past her racket, landing with a soft thud in the corner.

"You're distracted," Marcus said, not unkindly.

"Just tired."

But that wasn't true. She was wide awake, hyper-aware of everything: the smell of clay and sunscreen, the distant rumble of **lightning** that had been threatening all afternoon, the way her heart seemed to stutter every time she looked at him and felt... nothing where there should have been everything.

That evening, the **cable** guy came to install their new internet package. Elena watched him work—young, efficient, his name tag read "Tomás"—and found herself telling him things she hadn't said to anyone. Not about Marcus, not about the hollow routine of their days, but about the vitamins she'd started taking after her miscarriage two years ago, how she still bought them every month even though she'd stopped hoping.

Tomás looked at her with eyes that understood too much. "My sister," he said. "She still has the baby clothes."

And then the storm broke—actual **lightning** this time, striking so close the house shook. The power went out. The cable connection sizzled and died.

In the darkness, Elena heard Marcus moving through the house, checking the breaker box. She didn't move. She sat on the couch feeling strangely calm, the vitamin bottle still on the counter, the padel gear by the door, the severed cable hanging from the wall.

Some things, she realized, couldn't be reconnected.

When Marcus returned with a flashlight, she was already packing.

"Elena?"

"I need to find out if I still remember how to be hungry," she said.

Outside, the rain came down like forgiveness, washing the court clean.