Dead Things Don't Float

The padel court was empty at sunset, which was how Elena preferred it. She and Marcus had been coming to this resort club for three years, and somehow the ritual of their weekend matches had become a proxy for everything they couldn't say aloud.

Today, she watched him bend to retrieve a ball from the corner, his shirt riding up to reveal the same lower back hair that had somehow seemed charming ten years ago. Now it just made her tired. A zombie life—that's what her sister called it. Not dead, but moving through motions without appetite. Elena served, and the ball cracked against the glass wall, the sound sharp and satisfying.

"You're playing like shit," Marcus said, but without malice. Just stating facts, the way he told her about the quarterly reports at the firm where they both worked, enslaved to a bull market that demanded they sacrifice everything to an economy that would replace them in a heartbeat.

"Maybe I'm done pretending this matters," she said, and he straightened up, racket dangling at his side. The sun was dipping below the clubhouse now, painting everything in bruised purples and oranges that felt almost apocalyptic.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm forty-two years old and I don't know who I am anymore. It means we haven't had sex in six months and the last time you asked me how I was, genuinely asked, I don't remember. It means I feel like I've been eaten alive by things that were supposed to make me happy."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "The pool's still open."

They didn't speak again until they were standing at the edge of the water, fully dressed. Elena looked at her reflection—some drowned thing rising to meet herself.

"Jump with me," she said.

Marcus took her hand. His palm was sweating. "I'm scared," he admitted, and something broke open in her chest.

"Me too."

They jumped. The water swallowed them whole, and for a moment, Elena thought they might just stay down there, grown weary of the business of rising. But then their fingers tightened, and they kicked toward surface—two nearly dead things deciding, just for tonight, to live anyway.