Love Games

The padel court hummed under fluorescent lights, Maria's paddle slick with sweat. Across the net, David served with that easy confidence she'd fallen for fifteen years ago. Their golden retriever, Buster, slept on the sidelines, gray muzzle resting on paws that once danced when she came home. Now he barely lifted his head at the ball's sharp crack against the glass walls.

"Your form's off," David called out, something smug in his tone. "Like you're hesitating."

Maria bit back the obvious response. She wasn't hesitating on the court. She was hesitating everywhere else—in their bedroom, at dinner, in the silence between them that had grown thick as oatmeal. The fox wasn't some other woman, though she'd checked his phone enough times. It was smaller, worse: the way he'd started looking through her when she spoke, his mind already three rooms ahead.

The ball slammed into her paddle. She returned it viciously.

"Remember," he said, volleying it back with practiced ease, "when we met? That tournament in Barcelona? You said you loved how I played—like I had nothing to prove."

Maria's laugh escaped before she could stop it. Sharp and ugly. "You were twenty-four. You didn't have anything to prove. Now you're forty and you still play every game like someone's keeping score."

"Someone always is."

The point hung between them, heavier than the ball. The score was 4-4, deuce. Their marriage was something like that too—always on the edge, never quite over.

Afterward, over dinner, she pushed spinach around her plate. Her mother had always said the bitter greens built character. Maybe that was the problem—they'd both built too much character over the years, become people who could bend but not break. Could not, somehow, break enough to reach each other.

David's phone buzzed. He checked it, his face closing like a door.

"Work?" she asked, though she already knew.

"Always."

Buster whimpered in his sleep, dreaming of rabbits he'd never catch. Maria watched her husband's fingers move across his screen and wondered: at what point do you stop playing a game you've already lost?

She served herself more spinach. The taste was bitter, like all the things she'd never said.