Where the Lightning Fell

Maria sat on the couch as the cable TV flickered with static, another reality show playing to an empty room. Outside, the storm intensified, lightning cracking the sky into brilliant white fractures.

She shouldn't have looked. That was the thought circling her mind like the storm outside. But his iPhone had buzzed on the coffee table—her coffee table, in their apartment—and the notification had lit up: "Can't wait to see you tomorrow xoxo"

Not a work contact. Not his mother. Someone who used xo's.

The cable finally gave up entirely, leaving her in the near-darkness, illuminated only by the storm's fury through floor-to-ceiling windows. She pressed the phone's screen. No password—they'd never believed in secrets from each other. Another lie, it turned out.

The messages stretched back months. Lunches that never happened. Late meetings that weren't meetings at all. A woman named Elena who sent photos that made Maria's chest feel like it had been hollowed out.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The thunder shook the windows.

She remembered how she'd teased him about his old Lightning cable, frayed at the ends, how he'd laughed and said, "It still works, doesn't it?" They'd been fraying too, she realized now. She just hadn't noticed the wires exposed beneath the surface.

The phone buzzed again in her hand. Elena: "Are you free this weekend?"

Maria's thumb hovered over the screen. She could confront him. She could pack her bags. She could pretend she never saw anything and continue in this half-lit existence where she was loved, or at least, performed love convincingly.

The apartment felt suddenly enormous, filled with the space between them. She set the iPhone back on the coffee table exactly as she'd found it, angled toward the door.

When the key turned in the lock twenty minutes later, she was back on the couch in the dark. He came in wet, shaking off his umbrella like a dog, smiling at her through the gloom.

"Power's out," he said. "Wild storm out there."

"It is," she said.

He came over, kissed her forehead, smelling of rain and something else—perfume she didn't wear, she realized now.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Never better," she said, and even she heard how bright her voice sounded, like lightning without thunder. "Just waiting for the lights to come back on."

He smiled and went to change. She watched him go, already planning her own departure, knowing some storms, once they break you, leave you changed forever.