Second Set

The lightning flashed across the sky as Elena walked onto the padel court, her racquet grip worn smooth from years of Thursday night matches. At 43, these games had become her vitamin—essential, routine, the only thing that kept her from dissolving entirely into spreadsheet cells and mortgage payments.

'You're still serving into the net,' Marcus called from the opposite baseline. He'd changed since college—thicker at the waist, thinner at the temples, but his smile still cracked something open in her chest that she'd thought welded shut years ago.

'And you're still reading every serve,' Elena returned, tossing the ball up. They'd been twenty then, lightning-struck by something they couldn't name, until she'd chosen the MBA program and he'd chosen his ex-wife. Now they were here, playing second sets in half-empty lives.

The storm was closing in. Each crash of thunder timed with their shots—thwack against the glass walls, the ball spinning like the years they'd lost. Elena felt it then, how carefully they'd both dosed themselves with just enough safety to survive. She'd swallowed her career like a daily supplement, told herself ambition was a vitamin she didn't need. Marcus had done the same with love, settling for companionship over combustion.

'My wife's leaving,' Marcus said suddenly, between points. The rain began falling, slow at first, then sudden as grace. 'She says I've been half-present for fifteen years. She's not wrong.'

Elena stood at the service line, the ball in her hand. Lightning illuminated the whole empty club—just them, and the rain, and the hollow sound of water hitting glass.

'My husband too,' she said. 'Last week. He said I married him for stability. He said I treat love like a vitamin—something that's good for me but not something I actually enjoy.'

Marcus laughed, then stopped. 'Are we going to finish this set?'

'Elena looked at the rain sheeting down the glass walls, at the sky cracking open. Something had been missing from her supplementation regimen. Not the tennis. Not the career. The dangerous stuff. The stuff that doesn't come in daily doses.

'No,' she said, walking toward the net. 'I think it's time we started playing without the safety gear.'