Match Point

The glass walls of the padel court reflected everything — the fluorescent lights, the sweat on David's brow, and the way my hands trembled as I adjusted my grip on the racket. We'd been coming here every Tuesday for three years, our ritual cemented in the schedule like church attendance for the secular.

"Your serve," David called from across the net, bouncing the ball with practiced ease. His iPhone lay face-up on the bench, screen illuminating with notifications I pretended not to notice. A text from HER. The one with the initials that had been appearing more frequently lately, always during our matches, always during the moments when the silence between points stretched too thin.

I served. The ball hit the glass wall, ricocheted wildly. David lunged, returning it with effortless power. I found myself running — really running — my feet pounding the synthetic surface, lungs burning, heart racing not from exertion but from the accumulation of months of suspicion, of intuition denied, of the way he'd started leaving his phone screen-down at home.

The game continued. We were evenly matched, as we'd always been. Padel had been our thing, our shared language. Now every volley felt like interrogation, every point scored felt like betrayal. I watched his iPhone light up again: 'Can't wait to see you.'

"Game point," I said, my voice steady despite the earthquake in my chest. David smiled, that charming crooked smile that had won me twelve years ago. "Bring it."

I served into the corner. He missed. The ball hit the fence.

"That's match," I said, walking to the net. He met me there, extending his hand over the tape. His palm was sweaty, his grip firm. "Good game," he said, but his eyes darted past me toward the bench, toward his phone.

"David," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I saw."

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. He didn't pull away. His iPhone buzzed again on the bench.

"I've been running from this," I continued, tears finally spilling. "Running from us, from whatever broke between the walls of this court. But I'm tired. I'm done running."

He looked at me then, really looked at me, and in that moment I saw not the man I'd married, not the opponent across the net, but someone else entirely — someone who, like me, had been playing a game he'd stopped believing in long ago.

"I know," he said softly. "I know."