Serve at Sunset

The padel racket felt foreign in Marco's hands, like an artifact from a life he'd lived centuries ago. Three months since Elena left, and he'd been moving through days as a zombie—automatic, hollow, sustained by caffeine and the pretense that everything was fine.

"You coming, or what?" David called from the other side of the court. The club was nearly empty at this hour, just the two of them and the dying light.

Marco adjusted his grip. His palms were sweating, not from heat but from the gnawing anxiety that had taken up residence in his chest. He served—the ball hit the glass wall, ricocheted back.

"Jesus," David said. "You're not even trying."

"I'm trying," Marco said, though they both knew it was a lie. He wasn't trying at anything anymore. Work was a series of forwarded emails. Meals were takeout containers stacked by the door. Sleep was a battlefield.

David walked to the net. "My sister's friend thinks she can read palms. She says everyone's got a line that splits—before and after. The moment that changes everything."

"That's bullshit."

"Is it?" David leaned against the net. "What's yours, Marco? The divorce? Or whatever happened before it that made you give up?"

Marco wanted to hit him. Instead, he looked at the palm trees swaying beyond the fence, their fronds silhouetted against a sky the color of bruising peaches. He remembered the honeymoon in Mallorca, Elena laughing as she tried to explain the rules of padel, her hands moving expressively. How long ago had he stopped watching those hands? How long had she been speaking to someone who wasn't there anymore?

"I didn't give up," Marco said quietly. "I just got tired of being the only one playing."

The words hung between them, and then something cracked open in his chest—not healing, not yet, but something. Movement.

David tossed him the ball. "Play."

Marco caught it. His palm stung where the seams pressed into skin. He served, and this time, the ball cleared the net with a sound like thunder.

"Again," David said.

Marco served again. And again. And for the first time in months, he wasn't a zombie moving through someone else's life. He was just a man at sunset, serving, while somewhere behind him, the palms kept swaying, indifferent and eternal.