The Bull We Carry

Maria stood at the edge of the padel court, sweat beading on her forehead as her partner—a man half her age who flirted with everyone—served with the enthusiasm of someone who'd never had his heart broken. The ball ricocheted off the wall, and Maria lunged, her knee aching in that familiar way that reminded her she wasn't thirty anymore.

She'd taken up padel after David left, hoping the aggression would help. Instead, it only amplified the silence waiting in her apartment. Her cat, Kafka, had died three weeks ago—a slow decline that had paralleled her marriage. David hadn't even come to the vet with her. He'd been 'busy,' the same excuse he'd used when she found the receipts, when she asked him to choose, when she realized she'd been loving a man who'd already checked out.

"You okay, Maria?" her partner asked.

"Fine," she said, though her hand trembled as she gripped the racket.

Later, at the apartment, she considered calling the cable company to reactivate her service. David had taken the premium package when he moved out—another petty cut in a year full of them. But something stopped her. The silence was better than the noise of pretending everything was normal.

Her phone buzzed. David's lawyer, asking about the division of assets. The bull, she called him—the man who charged through negotiations with the stubbornness of something that didn't know when to stop. He wanted the house. He wanted the retirement fund. He wanted everything except Kafka's vet bills, which had been in her name.

Maria sat on the couch, the one David had chosen six years ago when they still made decisions together. She thought about the Spanish word padel—how close it was to padlock, to things that close and open. She thought about Kafka, whose name David had suggested, claiming he loved existential literature. Another lie.

The silence pressed against her ears. For the first time in months, she didn't reach for her phone. She didn't call the cable company. She didn't check David's social media. She just sat there, feeling the ache in her knee, imagining the next match, the next serve, the next time she'd swing at something and actually hit it.

Outside, a stray cat meowed. Maria closed her eyes and let herself cry—for the cat, for the marriage, for the years she'd spent accommodating someone else's needs. Then she stood up, grabbed her keys, and walked out to buy cat food. Some bulls you charge. Some, you simply feed until they're yours.