Sunday at the Club

The sun beat down on the padel court, relentless as a lie told too many times. I adjusted my hat for the third time in as many minutes, pulling the brim low to hide the thinning patches that had mapped themselves across my scalp like an unwanted prophecy. Forty-four years old and losing ground on multiple fronts.

Across the net, David moved with the easy confidence of a man who hadn't yet received his own bad news. His hair was still thick, dark, unfairly intact. We'd been friends since college, back when friendship meant something simpler—shared beers, borrowed notes, mutual complaints about exams. Now it meant watching each other's lives from a careful distance, commenting from the sidelines while keeping the real observations unspoken.

"Your form's off," David called out, slamming the ball into the corner I couldn't reach. "Again."

I didn't tell him I'd stopped sleeping. I didn't mention the vitamins lining my bathroom counter—D for the depression I refused to name, B12 for the energy I couldn't summon, magnesium because the internet said it helped with everything. Sarah had left them there when she moved out, a half-apology in supplement form. Take care of yourself, the labels seemed to whisper. As if health could be manufactured in bottles.

"Game point," David said, and I saw it then—the way his eyes flicked toward the clubhouse, where Sarah sat with her new husband. My former wife. my former friend's new... whatever. The timeline didn't add up. It never had.

The ball sailed toward me, a small green sphere of perfect clarity, and I let it drop. Just stood there in my stupid hat, holding a racquet for a game I'd stopped playing months ago, watching David's expression shift from competitive to guilty to something like pity.

"How long?" I asked, and the question hung between us heavier than the heat.

He took off his own hat then, and I saw it—the first patches of scalp showing through, same pattern as mine. We were both losing something, it turned out. Just not the same things.