Second Serve

The corporate retreat had been Elena's idea—team building, she'd called it. What it meant was three days in Cabo watching colleagues get drunk and play padel, a sport that managed to combine everything pretentious about tennis with everything exhausting about squash.

She found Marcus by the pool at midnight, the water reflecting cable news from the overhead screen—some storm system moving up the coast. He'd cut his hair since the audit project, she noticed. The military-short crop made him look harder, like he'd been carved down to essentials.

"You gonna join me or just stand there judging?" Marcus didn't open his eyes.

"I don't swim with coworkers. It's a rule."

"We're not coworkers anymore. Audit wrapped up two weeks ago."

That was true. They were just two people who'd spent six months tearing each other apart in conference rooms and falling together in hotel elevators, a fact they'd successfully not discussed since. The lightning flashed—one, two, three miles out—and she sat on the edge of a chaise, not quite committing.

"I'm leaving the firm," he said.

Elena stopped breathing. "For where?"

"London office. They offered me partnership."

"And you're just mentioning this now?"

"Now when there's nothing you can do about it?" Marcus opened his eyes, and the lightning flash caught the raw, terrifying honesty in them. "Yes."

The storm broke then—rain sheeting down, cable TV flickering and dying, pool surface gone chaotic in the dark. They should have gone inside. Instead, she slid into the water beside him, fully dressed, and when his hand found hers underwater, neither of them pulled away.

"This doesn't change anything," she said.

"No," Marcus agreed, and his thumb traced circles on her palm. "It just makes everything more terrible."

They stayed in the pool until dawn, watching lightning strike the ocean, not speaking, not letting go. Some second serves, you shouldn't return. You should just let them hit the fence and walk away.

She didn't.