Sunday Morning Padel

Elena moved through the apartment like a zombie, her body present but her mind still tangled in the spreadsheet disasters from Friday. The quarterly projections had collapsed, and her boss's voice still echoed in her head: unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable. At 4 AM, she'd finally stopped checking email, though her phone had glowed with new notifications every hour since.

Her dog, Barnaby, nudged her knee with his wet nose — his morning walk could not be postponed for corporate catastrophes. Elena sighed, shoved her feet into slippers, and clipped on his leash. The predawn streets were empty, the city holding its breath before waking.

"Coffee with Marcus after," she told herself. Their padel match was at eight, a ritual she'd started six months ago when her divorce papers were still fresh. The sport was terrible exercise disguised as social hour, but she'd grown to love the sharp crack of the ball against the glass walls, the way sweat washed away the residue of workplace humiliations.

Back home, she scrambled eggs with spinach — the good kind from the farmer's market, not the limp stuff in bags that made her feel like she was eating grass. Marcus was bringing the croissants. Always the croissants, even though she'd told him a dozen times she was watching her carb intake. He never listened. It was infuriating. It was why they'd been sleeping together for three months without ever discussing what that meant.

Barnaby barked at something outside — a squirrel, probably. Elena watched steam curl from her coffee mug and thought about how she'd explain the spreadsheet failure when Marcus asked. He'd offer sympathy, maybe suggest she find a new job, maybe not. Their relationship lived in the pauses between conversations, the comfortable silences over post-padel coffees, the way his hand lingered on her lower back when they said goodbye.

She checked her phone. Another email from her boss. Subject line: URGENT.

Elena turned it off. The spinach sizzled in the pan. Barnaby whined at the door. Somewhere out there, a padel court waited, and after that, a conversation she wasn't ready to have but maybe didn't need to rush. The weekend, she decided, could still be salvaged.