The Weather Between Us

The lightning forked across the sky like a crack in heaven's foundation, illuminating the bedroom where Sarah lay beside a man who had become a stranger in slow motion. Richard's breathing was rhythmic, peaceful—the sleep of a man who had recently taken up padel, who had bought new equipment, who had joined a club three times a week. The sleep of a man living a second life she hadn't been invited to join.

Sarah rose and walked to the window, watching the storm tear through the Atlanta suburbs. She thought about summer 1998, sitting in the bleachers with Richard at a baseball game, how they'd shared a single beer because they were broke and in love and the world felt expandable. He'd explained the infield fly rule with such earnest enthusiasm, and she'd pretended to care because his passion made everything interesting. They'd been so young then, so certain that love was armor against time's inevitable erosion.

Now Richard came home smelling of expensive cologne and padel courts, talking about a woman named Elena who had "the most incredible backhand." Sarah had nodded, poured wine, swallowed the jealousy that tasted like battery acid. She'd stopped asking questions. Some answers were wounds you chose not to inflict upon yourself.

The lightning struck closer, and the bedroom filled with harsh white light. In that flash, she saw it clearly: Richard's phone on the nightstand, screen dark, holding secrets. She could reach for it. She could finally know.

Instead, she lay back down beside him, listening to the thunder roll toward them like the approach of something irreversible. Tomorrow she would ask. Tomorrow she would demand the truth. But tonight, with the lightning scribbling its bright violence across the sky, she let herself pretend that marriage was like baseball—something that could stretch into extra innings, something where you could always come back from behind, something where the game wasn't over until the final out.

She closed her eyes as the first heavy drops began to fall, and for the first time in months, she prayed for rain that would never end.