Contact Sport

The padel court glowed under floodlights, Maria's skin glistening as she smashed the ball toward me. I should have been focusing on the game, on our anniversary trip to Cabo, but my mind kept drifting to the text I'd seen on her iPhone earlier—the notification that lit up her screen while she was in the shower: "Can't stop thinking about last night."

I'd convinced myself it was work. Her colleagues were obsessive, the tech startup culture demanding. But then there were the vitamin supplements in her bag—new ones I'd never seen. Prenatal vitamins. We hadn't discussed children. We hadn't discussed anything of substance in months.

"You're playing like shit," Maria called out, though she was smiling. That was the problem with her—she could weaponize affection.

Lightning cracked across the sky, close enough that I felt it in my teeth. The storm had been threatening all evening, hanging over us like the conversation we kept avoiding.

"Game point," she said, palm open toward me in that placating gesture she'd mastered. The one that said I'm being unreasonable, I'm making things difficult.

I served. The ball hit the net.

"That's it," she said, dropping her racquet. "What's going on with you? You've been weird since we got here."

The first raindrop hit my cheek. Then another. Within seconds, the sky opened up. We ran toward the clubhouse, but I stopped. Something in me needed to stand there, let the storm have me.

"The vitamins," I said over the thunder.

She froze. Rain plastered her hair to her face.

"What about them?"

"And the text. On your phone."

Her silence said everything. Lightning flashed again, illuminating her palm pressed against her forehead, the way she did when she was cornered.

"It's not what you think," she started.

"Isn't it?"

She reached for my hand. Her palm was cold against mine. "I was going to tell you. Tonight. Over dinner."

"Tell me what? That you're pregnant with someone else's child?"

"That I'm leaving." Rain ran down her face like tears, though she wasn't crying. "The vitamins are for me. I'm depleted, David. This relationship—it's like a deficiency I can't fix."

The thunder rattled my chest. I stood there while she walked back to the clubhouse alone, her palm pressed to her eyes, and wondered if I'd just lost the match or finally won my freedom.