Glass Walls

The padel court smelled of rubber and desperation. Mark's breath came in ragged bursts, each exhale carrying another fragment of his dignity. At forty-three, he was the youngest partner at the firm, yet somehow the oldest soul in the room.

Across the net, Richard served with mechanical precision. Richard, whose full head of silver hair caught the fluorescent lights like a crown. Richard, who had everything Mark had sold his soul to acquire.

"Your form's suffering, Mark," Richard called out, as the ball ricocheted off the glass wall. "Personal issues?"

Mark's hand went instinctively to his own thinning hair—a nervous tic he couldn't break, couldn't hide. Three divorces would do that to a man. Or maybe it was the way he'd been running from himself since he turned thirty, one promotion at a time, one compromise after another until the person he'd meant to be had dissolved into something unrecognizable.

"Just tired, Richard."

"We're all tired." Richard's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Some of us are just better at faking it."

And there it was—the truth they never spoke. The truth about how they moved through their days like zombies, dead inside, animated only by coffee, quarterly targets, and the terrifying thought of what might be waiting in the silence between meetings.

Mark missed the next shot deliberately. The ball sailed past him, bouncing softly against the glass.

"Game point," Richard said, but Mark was already walking to the bench.

"You know," Mark said, sitting heavily, "my father died at my age. Heart attack. Right on the jogging trail he'd been running every morning for twenty years."

Richard's expression flickered. Something like recognition.

"He was chasing something," Mark continued. "I never figured out what. Maybe he was just running away from the same things I am."

The fluorescent lights hummed. Richard sat beside him, the artificial brightness aging them both.

"My hair started turning at thirty-five," Richard said quietly. "Stress, mostly. Thought about coloring it."

Mark looked at him—really looked. The expensive suit hiding the same exhaustion, the perfect posture masking the same hollowness.

"Why didn't you?"

"Thought it might be the last honest thing about me." Richard laughed softly, without humor. "Pathetic, isn't it?"

Mark thought of his third wife's voice: *You're not running toward anything, Mark. You're just in motion.*

He stood up, picked up his racquet.

"One more game?"