The Art of Staying Afloat

The padel court gleamed under the Spanish sun, a blue rectangle where we pretended nothing was wrong. Your backhand was sharp today—aggressive, precise, everything our marriage hadn't been in months.

'I've been seeing someone,' you said between points, casual as discussing the score.

The ball hit the mesh. My breath hitched. I served anyway, muscle memory overriding the crack forming through my chest.

Forty-love. The numbers mocked me.

We played until our shirts clung to us like second skins, until the water station ran dry, until neither of us could pretend this was just a game. You wiped your face with the hem of your shirt, exposing that constellation of moles along your ribcise I used to trace while you slept.

'It's serious,' you added, softer.

Later, I found you at the pool. Not swimming—never swimming—but sitting on the edge, legs submerged, watching the water ripple around your calves like a promise I couldn't keep.

I slid in beside you. The shock of cold registered somewhere distant. We sat there as the sun dipped, as other couples laughed and drank, as the pool lights flickered on and turned the water into something almost forgiving.

'Marrying you was the easiest thing I've ever done,' I said. 'Loving you harder still.'

You cried, then—quiet tears that joined the pool without changing its level at all. I understood, suddenly, that love and loss are just different temperatures of the same water, and some people you never stop drowning for, even when they're right beside you, even when you're both trying to stay afloat.