Salt on Our Skin

The morning after Elena told me she wanted a separation, I found myself at the padel court at seven. Marcus was already there, his orange shirt blazing against the pale blue sky like some kind of cruel joke.

"You're early," he said, bouncing a ball against his racket. "Rough night?"

You could say that. I'd spent hours watching Elena sleep beside me, memorizing the way her hair — that copper cascade I'd run my fingers through for twelve years — fanned across the pillow. She'd chosen her words carefully: *I love you, but I don't know if I'm in love with you anymore.* The kind of line that sounds like bad fiction until it's happening to you.

"Something like that," I said, and we began to play.

The game was brutal. Marcus played like he had something to prove, and I played like I was trying to break something — the racket, the ball, myself. My shoulder screamed. Sweat dripped into my eyes. For forty minutes, there was only the thwack of rubber against glass and the rhythm of my own ragged breathing. No Elena. No apartment that would soon be half-empty. No careful conversations about who gets the coffee maker.

After, Marcus suggested we swim. The pool was still empty, water flat as glass. I dove in without thinking, let the cool silence envelop me, and stayed underwater until my lungs burned. There, in the muffled quiet, everything felt simple. Maybe that was the problem, I thought, surfacing. Elena had always wanted simple, and I had given her complicated.

We sat on the edge afterward, legs dangling in the water. Marcus offered me a cut orange from his gym bag. "Vitamin C," he said. "For whatever's eating you."

I took a segment. The juice stung my cracked lips. "My wife left me."

"Shit." He looked away, gave me privacy in his silence. Then: "You still wearing your ring?"

I looked down at the silver band that had become part of my anatomy. "Habit."

"Habits can break."

I twisted the ring off. The skin beneath was pale, vulnerable-looking. I slipped it into my pocket.

"Breakfast?" Marcus asked.

"Breakfast."

We walked to the café in our wet swim trunks, two men with nowhere else to be. The sun was rising properly now, painting everything in gold. For the first time in twelve years, I didn't know what came next. And terrifying as that was, there was something like freedom in it, salt on my skin and the taste of oranges on my tongue.