Seeds of What We Were

The padel court gleamed under the Mexican sun, a pristine rectangle of blue and green where Marco and I had played every morning of this vacation—this last-ditch attempt to save a marriage that had been hollowing out from the inside for years.

"Your backhand," Marco said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the tail of his shirt. "You're not following through."

I laughed, and it sounded like glass breaking. "That's what you're worried about? My backhand?"

We sat on the bench between games, and he handed me a wedge of orange he'd sectioned with his pocketknife. His fingers were precise, methodical—always had been. It was the same precision he'd used to dismantle our life together, piece by careful piece, without ever raising his voice.

"Anna, we can't keep doing this," he said, and for once, he wasn't talking about the game.

"I know," I said. The orange was impossibly bright against the graying canvas of our existence. Somewhere nearby, a resort dog—a scrawny golden thing with one flopped ear—wandered past, paused to sniff at my discarded racket, then moved on. Smart dog.

That evening, at what we both knew would be our last dinner together, I ordered the papaya sorbet. It arrived pale and melting, spooned into a martini glass that felt too fragile for the occasion. Marco watched me eat it, his face unreadable in the candlelight.

"You never liked papaya," he said.

"I'm trying new things," I replied. "Starting now."

He nodded, and something like relief softened the hard lines of his face. We didn't touch. We didn't say I love you. We didn't say the words that had become lies between us.

Outside, the dog barked at something in the darkness—maybe a lizard, maybe its own reflection. A game of chase, pointless and endless. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the rhythmic *thwack* of a late-night padel match, other couples playing out their own battles on that bright blue court.

"Check-out is at eleven," Marco said when the silence stretched too thin.

"I'll be gone by nine," I answered.

And that was it. No shouting. No broken dishes. Just the taste of papaya on my tongue and the knowledge that some things, once they've rotted from the inside, can't be saved—not by vacations, not by careful precision, not by love that died somewhere along the way.

The dog barked again, and this time, I understood what it was saying: *run.*