What the Storm Takes

The lightning struck somewhere close, and Elena's hair went static at the temples, lifting in dark fronds around her face. She didn't notice. She was watching the goldfish—Jonathan's goldfish, technically, though Jonathan had been gone six months.

"He's swimming backwards," she said.

"He's a fish, El. They do that." Marcus sipped his whiskey. The cable had died an hour ago when the storm rolled in, leaving them with nothing but the fish tank and each other.

"No. Look." She pointed. The goldfish—named Picasso, because Jonathan had been pretentious—was indeed rotating slowly in the water, nose to glass, then tail to glass, like he was searching for an exit.

Marcus set down his glass. "Maybe he knows something we don't."

"That's not funny."

"Wasn't trying to be."

Another flash of lightning, and this time the room held white for a heartbeat, illuminating everything: Elena's hollowed cheeks, the takeout containers on the coffee table, the dust on the picture frame she kept turned face-down. Marcus looked at her hair, darker now than when they'd met—she'd stopped dyeing it after Jonathan left. He liked it better this way, honest at the roots.

"You should go," she said.

"The storm—"

"Not the storm. Here. This." She gestured at the apartment, at the life she was still living inside. "You're pretending this is something it's not."

"I'm not—"

"You cut the cable, Marcus. You brought whiskey. You've been coming over every Tuesday since February." She turned from the fish to face him. "I can't give you what you want."

The room went dark again. Thunder rolled through floorboards.

"I'm not asking you to—"

"Aren't you?" Her voice cracked. "Jonathan left me. Not you. But you're the one acting like something broke."

He was quiet. The fish spun again.

"Sometimes," Marcus said, "things break even if nobody meant them to."

She looked at him, really looked at him, in the half-light. His hair was starting to silver at the temples. He'd stopped shaving as often. She saw how tired he looked—how tired he'd been looking, for months, and she hadn't let herself see it.

"The fish is fine," she said finally.

"What?"

"He's not dying. He's not sick. He's just swimming." She stepped closer. "But I think he might be lonely."

Marcus didn't move. "El—"

"I can't promise anything," she said. "But I can let you stay until the cable comes back."

Outside, lightning forked the sky. They watched it together, reflected in the fish tank, two people caught between what they'd lost and what they were brave enough to want. The goldfish swam forward, then back, then forward again—finding its way in the dark, over and over, like something was telling it to keep trying.