Double Fault at Sunset

Marco's palm was sweating against the grip of his padel racquet, though the evening air had turned cool. Three courts over, Elena was laughing at something Greg had said—head thrown back, hand on his arm, the same way she'd laughed at Marco's jokes five years ago when their marriage still had fingerprints left on it.

He'd been running on fumes for months now. The affair wasn't even a secret anymore; it was just this unspoken agreement they both pretended not to see, like the crack in the bedroom mirror or the tax returns they kept meaning to file.

'You're staring again,' Greg called from across the net. The man had the lean, hungry look of a fox who'd found the chicken coop door left unlatched. 'Focus on the ball, Marco. Not on your... distractions.'

Marco missed the return. The ball sailed into the fence.

Greg was everything Marco wasn't: charismatic, successful, shamelessly predatory. He'd made his fortune in baseball analytics before retiring at thirty-five, and now he spent his days inhabiting other men's lives like a comfortable suit he could take off at will.

'Tough match,' Greg said afterward at the club bar, Elena's hand possessively on his knee. 'Some days you just can't get your footing.'

Marco ordered a whiskey, neat. The amber liquid caught the last light of sunset through the window, refracting it into something almost beautiful. He thought about palm readings he'd gotten as a kid—how the fortune teller had promised him greatness, happiness, a love that would outlast the stars.

The fortune teller hadn't mentioned that some loves just rotted from the inside out, slow and quiet, until you woke up one morning and realized the thing beside you in bed was a stranger wearing your wife's perfume.

'So,' Greg said, all teeth and insincere camaraderie. 'Same time next week?'

Marco swallowed his drink in one burning gulp. The whiskey didn't taste like courage. It just tasted like whiskey.

'Sure,' he said. 'Same time next week.'

Some games you kept playing long after you'd already lost. It was the only way to pretend you were still in the match at all.