The Bitter Aftertaste

Marcus stared at the amber **vitamin** bottle on his wife's nightstand—pregnancy vitamins, expiration date still six months away. Emma had told him three weeks ago she wanted to focus on her career. She'd said she wasn't ready for children, not yet, maybe not ever. The lie settled in his stomach like something curdled.

The **padel** court reservation confirmation on her **iPhone** screen glowed at 2 AM. She'd claimed it was a girls' weekend in Barcelona—laughter and tapas and forgetting the pressures of their London life. Instead, she'd booked a mixed doubles tournament. He'd played padel exactly once in university, with a roommate who'd later died in a car crash. Emma knew how much that memory still stung.

In the hallway, the **baseball** cap sat on the coat rack—a vintage Brooklyn Dodgers snapback he'd searched for months to give her last Christmas. She'd told him it was stolen from the gym locker room in January. Now it smelled faintly of cologne he'd never worn, something woody and expensive that made his chest tighten.

He slid the hat onto his head, staring into the mirror. The man staring back looked hollowed out, like something had been eating him from the inside. Six years of marriage, reduced to a collection of objects that didn't add up, a story with too many plot holes. **Baseball** had always been his father's sport—the one thing they'd shared before the silence between them grew too thick to bridge. Emma had worn that cap to every game they'd attended together, his favorite thing about her.

Outside their building, dawn was breaking gray and uncertain over the city. Marcus took out his own phone and typed: *When were you going to tell me?* Then deleted it. Some truths, once spoken, couldn't be unheard. Some betrayals, once named, became permanent.

The vitamins went into the trash. The hat stayed on his head. Somewhere over the Atlantic, Emma was probably sleeping, or maybe she was already awake, smiling at someone else across a breakfast she'd never bothered explaining. Marcus walked toward the river, carrying nothing but the weight of knowing the life he'd built was already gone.