Greens and Games

Forty-seven years old and still measuring her worth by how well she could pretend to enjoy things she hated. Eleanor poked at her spinach salad, watching her husband Mark dominate yet another padel match against couples half their age. He played with the aggression of a man who'd spent three decades proving something to someone who wasn't watching anymore.

The spinach tasted bitter—organic, locally sourced, just like everything else at this absurdly expensive resort where they'd come to "reconnect." That was the word Mark used, as if their marriage were a WiFi connection that just needed a reset.

"You're not eating," he said later, sliding into the chair beside her at the pool. His hair was wet from a post-game shower, and he smelled of expensive cologne and the peculiar metallic scent of his own ambition. He'd won, of course. He always won.

"Not hungry." She watched a young woman in a red bikini dive into the pool, surfacing laughing, water streaming like diamonds from dark hair. "Mark, do you remember why we started coming here?"

He frowned, reached for her hand across the table. "For us. To get away from the—"

"No." She pulled away gently. "We came because you wanted to show everyone you could afford it. Because your promotion was announced and you needed everyone to know you'd made it. And I ate the spinach I hated and played padel with your boss's wife even though my back was killing me and I smiled through every minute of it."

"Eleanor..."

"I'm done pretending." She stood up, leaving her uneaten salad, leaving him beside the chlorinated water where they'd spent twelve anniversaries taking the same photograph in the same spot, smiling harder each year as if determination could manufacture happiness.

The young woman in the red bikini climbed out of the pool, vibrant and unselfconscious. Eleanor walked toward the cabana, toward the room where she'd packed her bags that morning. Behind her, Mark called her name, but she kept walking. For the first time in three decades, she was hungry.