Some Bets You Lose

The office pool had started as a joke—five bucks on when Karen would finally leave Marcus. I'd put my money on 'never,' certain that some marriages were too stubborn to die, even as they rotted from the inside.

The goldfish bowl sat on her desk like a silent accusation, its solitary inhabitant circling endlessly in that small, glass prison. She'd brought it in the week after her daughter moved to college, something alive in the suddenly empty house. 'His name is Barry,' she'd told me, and I'd nodded, not understanding then how easily we attach ourselves to whatever might fill the void.

'You should come,' Greg said, leaning against my doorframe with that lazy grin he'd had since we were twenty-five. 'Padel tournament this Saturday. My partner bailed. Just like old times.'

Just like old times. The phrase settled in my chest like something jagged. We'd been friends through three marriages between us, through the collapse of his father's business, through the years my wife spent building her career while I built my resentment in equal measure. Greg, who always seemed to be exactly where he needed to be, exactly when it mattered.

The lightning struck that Friday night—real lightning, a sudden summer storm that shook the windows. We were in bed, not touching, the space between us vast and populated by everything we couldn't say anymore.

'I saw Greg at the tennis courts,' I said, though I hadn't. 'He invited me to play padel.'

Sarah's back stiffened. 'Greg? I haven't heard that name in years.'

'He seems good.'

'He always seems good.' She turned away, and in the flash of another lightning bolt, I saw it: the familiarity in her tone, the defensive edge. Not the wife responding to her husband's friend. Something else.

The betting pool. Karen had been leaving Marcus for six months. I'd put down twenty dollars on 'never,' certain that some things endured.

I walked to the home office and opened my laptop. Sarah's email was still up—careless, unlike her. And there it was, months of correspondence with Greg. Padel games that weren't padel games. Coffee meetings that weren't coffee meetings. A goldfish purchased together—'something alive in this empty apartment,' he'd written. 'Small, orange, endlessly circling. Like us.'

The lightning illuminated the backyard pool below, its surface rippling in the wind. We'd put it in ten years ago, for the children who rarely used it now. Another empty vessel, another thing we'd filled with expectations that had long since evaporated.

I closed the laptop. Some bets, you lose before you even place them.