Second Serve at Forty-Two

The spinach stuck between my teeth while Richard explained the merger synergies. I could feel it—a green wedge of evidence that I was too distracted to care about the corporate reshuffling that would determine my bonus. Three months post-divorce, and I was still eating lunch at my desk, still letting conversations happen around me rather than to me.

'You're not hearing a word I say,' Richard said, not unkindly.

'You mentioned baseball,' I lied.

'I mentioned my son's travel team.' He leaned in. 'Elena, you need a life. Have you tried that new padel club downtown?'

So there I was on a Tuesday night, standing on a blue court with a racquet that felt foreign in my hands, wearing shorts that revealed knees I hadn't seen in sunlight since before the pandemic. Padel was like tennis for people who'd given up on perfection—smaller court, walls you could hit off, forgiveness built into the game.

My partner was Mark, fifty-something, with the kind of ease that comes from having nothing left to prove. We were playing against a couple in their twenties, all aggressive serves and shouted encouragement.

'Your backhand,' Mark said, tossing me a ball during a changeover. 'You're thinking too much.'

'It's my job to think too much. I'm a VP of Strategy.'

'Then think about this.' He positioned himself. 'Spinach. Baseball. Padel. Three things that have nothing to do with each other until they do.'

I laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of me. 'What does that even mean?'

'It means you're here instead of at your desk. That's something.'

We played until my knees ached and my hair stuck to my neck in sympathetic tendrils. We lost two sets to one. But when Mark suggested dinner at the place next door—tacos, nothing fancy—I found myself saying yes.

Over spinach salad and too much margarita, I learned he'd played minor league baseball until an injury ended it. Now he sold insurance and played padel three times a week.

'Do you miss it?' I asked. 'The baseball.'

He shrugged. 'I miss the certainty of it. You hit the ball, you run, you're safe or you're out. None of this gray area bullshit.' He gestured at my phone, which had buzzed three times with work emails. 'But you learn to live in the gray anyway.'

His hand brushed mine when he reached for the salt. I didn't move away. For the first time in months, I wasn't thinking about Richard's mergers or my ex-husband's new girlfriend or the email I should have sent two hours ago.

'Think you'll come back next week?' Mark asked.

'I think I might.'

'Good.' He smiled. 'Your backhand needs work.'

I drove home with the windows down, salsa music fading on the radio, and realized I'd made it through an entire evening without checking the time once. The divorce papers were still in my filing cabinet. The merger would still be there tomorrow. But right now, at forty-two, I was learning to hit off the walls. Some games, you don't have to win. You just have to keep playing.