Summer Games at Sunset

The padel court shimmered in the July heat, each swing of the racquet sending a hollow echo off the corrugated metal roof. At forty-three, newly divorced and spectacularly alone, Marco had taken up the sport his therapist suggested. Something about community, movement, not drinking himself to sleep in front of Netflix.

"You're gripping it too tight," Elena said from the other side of the net. Her orange tanktop was the brightest thing in the fading light, a shocking burst of citrus against the slate-gray court. She was maybe thirty-eight, with a jagged, white-blonde streak in her dark hair that caught the sunset like a caught breath.

They'd been playing together for three weeks. The routine had become the architecture of his summer: Tuesdays and Thursdays, six o'clock, the court he booked under the name he'd haven't yet changed back from his marriage.

"Sorry." Marco loosened his hold. "Just tired."

"You're always tired." She walked to the net, and something in the way she moved—deliberate, graceful—made his chest ache. "My mother sends me those vitamin packets. The expensive ones from that multilevel marketing scheme she joined. She says I'm working too hard."

"Are you?"

"Are you working too hard, or am I working too hard?"

"Both."

"Yes." She leaned against the net, and for the first time, he noticed the lines around her mouth, the way her eyes held something he recognized from his own reflection. "My ex-husband said I made everything difficult. He preferred easy."

Marco felt the air leave his body. "Mine too. She left me for someone 'uncomplicated.'"

"Uncomplicated." Elena laughed, but it wasn't happy. "What does that even mean? Someone who doesn't ask questions? Someone who doesn't notice when you're lying about where you've been?"

"Someone who doesn't care enough to notice."

The sun dipped below the trees, casting long shadows across the court. Marco's hair was thinner than it had been five years ago, his stomach softer, his bank account smaller after lawyers who'd billed by the hour to dismantle his life. But standing there, across the net from a woman with an orange shirt and secrets he was starting to recognize, he felt something shift.

"Next week," Elena said, gathering her things. "Same time?"

"Same time."

"Good." She paused at the gate. "Maybe after, we could get dinner? Actual food, not vitamin packets and good intentions."

Marco felt something unclench in his chest, something that had been tight since the papers were signed, since the locks were changed, since he'd stopped recognizing the person in the mirror. "I'd like that," he said. "I'd like that very much."

She smiled then—a real one, this time—and walked into the cooling evening air. Marco stood alone on the court as the automatic lights flickered on, his racquet still in his hand, his heart beating faster than it had during any point of the match.