Service Fault

The padel ball cracked against the glass wall, that familiar hollow sound that had become the soundtrack of their Sunday mornings. Elena watched it roll toward the mesh fence, not bothering to chase it.

"Your serve," Marcus said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His wedding ring glinted in the harsh court lights—caught, for a moment, like something she'd almost forgotten to notice.

"I'm done," she said, setting her racquet down gently on the heated blue surface.

Marcus froze. The silence between them was heavier than any ball they'd hit all morning. "Done with the set, or—"

"Both."

They drove home in separate cars, which was ridiculous, really—they'd only driven separately because Marcus had come straight from his brother's place, and Elena had always found herself inventing reasons to be elsewhere on Sunday nights. The goldfish bowl in their hallway caught the afternoon light, casting undulating waves across the walls. Three fish remained from the seven they'd bought on their anniversary, a fact that felt suddenly, shamefully metaphorical.

Barnaby—their elderly golden retriever—lay on his favorite spot on the rug. He thumped his tail at the sound of their key in the lock, that blind, hopeful rhythm that made Elena's chest ache. How long had she been resenting this dog for needing what she no longer felt she could give?

"We should talk," Marcus said, but he was already pulling his phone from his pocket, checking work emails like a reflex.

"We've been talking for months," she said. "That's the problem. We've been talking circles around everything that actually matters."

He looked up then, really looked at her, and she saw it: the same exhaustion she'd been carrying like a stone in her stomach. "Is it her?"

"It's not her. It's that I don't remember the last time I looked forward to coming home. It's that we're together in rooms where we're never actually present. It's that our fish keep dying, Marcus, and neither of us has bothered to figure out why."

Barnaby lifted his head, whining softly, and they both turned instinctively to comfort him. Their hands brushed, and for a moment, the old current hummed between them—familiar, complicated, insufficient.

"Padel next Sunday?" Marcus asked, so matter-of-factly she almost laughed.

"Sure," she said. "Padel next Sunday."

Some endings, she thought, watching him retreat to his home office, were just different arrangements of the same lies. Some games you kept playing because you'd forgotten how to do anything else.