Match Point in October

The ball bounced off the glass wall, that sickening hollow sound that had become the soundtrack to our dying marriage. Elena wiped sweat from her forehead, her dark hair matted against her neck in strands that used to seduce me, now just made her look exhausted.

"You're not even trying," she said, hands on hips, her padel racket dangling like an accusation.

I am, I thought. I'm trying to remember why we're still doing this. Every Sunday morning, like clockwork, pretending we're a couple who enjoys things together.

After the match—a 6-2 slaughter I mostly spent watching her backhand—we sat at the club's terrace. She picked at her spinach omelette, pushing the green pieces around her plate with surgical precision.

"My mother asked when we're giving her grandchildren," she said, not looking up.

An orange rolled off the fruit display at the next table and stopped near my foot. Some cosmic joke. The color matched the sunrise behind her, painting everything in that desperate, golden hue that only comes right before something ends.

"Elena, I met someone."

The spinach stopped moving. Her hand froze mid-push.

"At work," I continued, though it felt like ripping my own throat open. "It's been three months."

She nodded, slowly. Then she reached across the table and took my hand, her thumb finding that callus on my palm from too many hours gripping this stupid racket, this stupid life we'd built on hollow sounds and Sunday mornings.

"I know," she whispered. "I've been waiting for you to say it."

The waiter brought our check. We left separately.