Seeds in the Sand

The corporate wellness retreat had been Elena's idea—her way of proving she could bring the team together after the merger fallout. Now she stood at the edge of the padel court, sweat trickling down her spine, watching Richard from Accounting miss another easy shot. He'd been talking about his high school baseball glory days for three days, and Elena had stopped pretending to care.

"You played baseball?" David asked, leaning against the fence with that lazy smile that had undone her in the supply closet last November. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the hollow of his throat.

"Varsity," Richard said, missing the ball again. "Could've gone pro if not for my knee."

Elena's phone buzzed in her pocket. She already knew it was Marcus—her husband, asking when she'd be home, if she was eating, if she needed him to pick up anything. She'd stopped answering texts yesterday. The papaya she'd cut for breakfast that morning had been mealy, disappointing, like everything else lately. Like the way David looked at her across meetings now, his eyes lingering just a second too long.

"Your serve," Richard called, and Elena realized she was still holding the racket, her grip tight enough to whiten her knuckles.

She hit the ball hard. It sailed past Richard, hit the fence with a satisfying thwack. Somewhere in the distance, a group was playing softball on the baseball field they'd set up, the crack of bats echoing through the humid afternoon. Childhood summers, her father teaching her to swing, the smell of cut grass and possibility. Before marriages and mortgages and the quiet erosion of self that happened while you weren't paying attention.

"Nice form," David said, and his hand brushed hers as he walked past.

That night, she would delete their text history. All six months of it. She would eat the last papaya from the fruit bowl, alone in her kitchen while Marcus slept. She would book another therapy session. But for now, she just watched the ball bounce against the court, over and over, and thought about how some things never really landed the way you expected them to.