The Weatherman's Friend

The storm had been brewing for hours, the kind that makes the air taste like metal and impending loss. Sarah climbed the utility pole with practiced ease, her hands finding the worn grooves in the wood where she'd climbed a thousand times before. Below her, the neighborhood slept, unaware that their internet was about to die. Again.

Then she saw him—David, standing at the base of the pole, holding the flashlight like an idiot.

"I thought you might need help," he called up. The first heavy drops began to fall.

Sarah didn't respond. David had been her best friend once, before the cable company promotion he'd taken over her head, before the promotion she'd taken over his, before three years of escalating petty betrayals had hollowed out everything between them until only professional resentment remained. Now he was her supervisor. Now she reported to him.

Lightning cracked the sky open—a violent white scar that illuminated the guilty satisfaction on his face when he'd passed her over for the lead technician position last month. She'd smiled through it. She'd congratulated him. She'd gone home and drunk half a bottle of wine while staring at her ceiling fan.

"Sarah, the cable lines are—"

"I know what the cable lines are, David. I've been doing this job longer than you."

The wind picked up, whipping her hair across her face. She should descend. The storm was getting dangerous. But she stayed frozen on the pole, suspended above him, this person she used to love like family, now just another obstacle in her career path.

"I'm leaving," he said quietly. "Transferred to the district office. Effective Monday."

She looked down. He wasn't looking at the storm anymore. He was looking at her.

"You're what?"

"I nominated you for my position," he said. "The paperwork went through yesterday."

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The thunder shook the pole beneath her feet. In that flash, she saw him clearly—the exhaustion, the resignation, the way he'd aged three years in six months. He wasn't winning anymore than she was. They were just both losing, differently.

She climbed down slowly, her hands shaking from cold or something else. When her feet hit the ground, neither of them moved.

"We could get coffee," he said. "Before I go."

Sarah looked at the storm clouds, at the utility pole, at the man who had once been the person she called first when her mother died, when she got divorced, when she needed someone to remind her who she was.

"Yeah," she said. "Coffee would be good."

The rain began in earnest, and they ran together toward his truck, leaving the cable lines to swing in the wind, untethered.