Chlorine and Regret

The spinach smoothie tasted like defeat.

Rafael stood by the pool at the country club, watching his ex-wife's new husband play padel with their daughter. The man moved with easy confidence, laughing as he smashed the ball against the glass wall, while Clara's delighted laughter carried across the water. Rafael had never learned to play. He'd always said it was a rich man's sport, another excuse he'd made for not being present.

He'd bought the smoothie on his doctor's orders. "Your cholesterol, Rafael. You're not twenty anymore." The green sludge sat heavy in his stomach, bitter like the divorce settlement that still left him writing checks three years later.

A splash interrupted his thoughts. A boy, maybe twelve, retrieved a baseball from the pool—someone's careless throw had sent it sailing over the fence. The kid shook the water from the ball like a wet dog, and Rafael remembered teaching Clara to throw a baseball. She'd been seven, wearing a oversized jersey that kept sliding off her shoulder, determination in her eyes as she wound up and released.

He'd missed last weekend. Again. She'd called, breathless with excitement about making the school team, and he'd been stuck in another pointless meeting with investors who kept asking him to grab the market by the horns, to be more of a bull in the china shop of opportunity.

He was tired of being bullish. He was tired of the smoothies and the loneliness and the excuses.

Clara waved from the padel court, spotting him. Rafael set down the spinach drink and forced himself to wave back. Someday, he told himself, he'd be the one on that court. Someday he'd stop watching from the sidelines.

But not today. Today he just finished his smoothie and walked to his car, the taste of regret lingering on his tongue like something he couldn't quite spit out.