Second Set

The papaya sat on the kitchen counter, its mottled yellow skin turning soft at the edges. Elena had bought it three days ago, intending to cut it up for breakfast, but somehow mornings had become a series of coffees gulped standing up, emails answered between showers, the fruit bowl accumulating evidence of good intentions gone wrong.

She arrived at the padel court ten minutes early, as always. The heat radiating off the artificial turf reminded her of summers they'd spent in Marbella, before the mortgage and the fertility treatments and the slow, quiet erosion of whatever they'd once promised each other. Her hair—once thick and dark, now highlighted into submission—frizzed in the humidity. She caught her reflection in the glass divider and wondered when she'd started looking like someone's mother instead of someone's wife.

"You're late," she said when David finally appeared, racquet slung over his shoulder like an afterthought.

"Work ran over. Marcus needs those projections by Monday."

"Marcus always needs something."

They played in silence for twenty minutes, the thwack of the ball against their racquets the only conversation between them. Elena's mind wandered to the cat, Luna, who'd taken to sleeping on David's pillow since he'd started working from the guest room. Small rebellions. That's what their marriage had become: a series of small, manageable betrayals.

"Are you happy?" Elena asked, the question escaping before she could stop it. She missed her return. The ball sailed past her, bouncing against the fence.

David lowered his racquet, wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "That's not something you ask during a match, El."

"When then? Over dinner? While you're answering emails at midnight?"

He sighed, that familiar sound of disappointment she'd heard more often than I love you lately. "I don't know. Are you?"

They left without finishing the set. At home, Elena finally cut the papaya. It was overripe, sweet and fermenting at the edges. She stood at the counter, eating it with a fork while David microwaved the leftover spinach salad from two nights before. The cat wound between their legs, purring loudly, as if trying to fill the silence with something that sounded like love.

"It's still good," David said, gesturing to the papaya with his fork. "If you scrape off the soft parts."

Elena looked at the fruit in her hand, at the man she'd chosen fifteen years ago, at the life they'd built together like a wall that now stood between them. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe it's time we stopped scraping."