Salt Water Sunday

Mara stood on the balcony of suite 412, watching the padel court below. Two men in pristine white moved with that easy arrogance of money—backhand, volley, laugh. They'd probably known each other since boarding school. Trust funds and summer houses in Sardinia.

She pressed her palm against the glass. It left a foggy imprint, like a ghost trying to get in.

"You coming back to bed?" Richard called from inside. His voice had that morning rasp she used to find sexy. Now it just sounded like ownership.

"In a minute."

She watched a woman join the men on the court. Long hair, tan lines Mara would kill for, a laugh that carried up to the balcony like champagne bubbles. The woman waved at someone below—at Richard's phone, vibrating on the nightstand with messages from a number that had appeared three times this week. Always during business hours. Always from Geneva.

Mara went to the mini-bar and poured water into a plastic cup. Expensive water—Italian glass bottle, seven euros a pop. She'd always hated that about Richard. The way he made even hydration feel like a status performance.

Below, the padel game intensified. The satisfying *thwack* of ball against racket. The sound of a life where problems were whether to play tie-breaks, not whether your marriage had already lost its set point.

Her palm sweated against the cold cup. She thought about the first time she'd touched his palm—calloused from rowing crew at Oxford, he'd said. Another story that had turned out to be half-true, the kind of truth that sounds romantic until you realize it's just a mask for someone who reinvents himself for every audience.

The water tasted like nothing. Like everything in this place—beautiful, expensive, hollow.

Richard's phone lit up again. Geneva.

Mara set down the cup and looked at her reflection in the darkened glass. She looked tired. The kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix. She pressed her palm to the window again, right through the ghost of her previous handprint, and watched the padel players continue their game as if the world wasn't full of people leaving rooms they never should have entered.