The Cat at Court Four

The orange cat appeared every Tuesday at 7 PM, sitting atop the chain-link fence like a judgmental gargoyle. Elena adjusted her padel racket grip and watched it watch her.

"You're distracted," Marco said, smashing the ball against the glass wall. "Running laps in your head again?"

Elena flinched. Marco always knew — or thought he did. Three years of marriage, twenty years of age difference, and he still treated her like a puzzle he'd already solved.

"Just tired."

"Bull." He softened it with a grin, but the word landed heavy. "You've been tired since the promotion. Since I sold the company. Since we started trying—"

"Don't."

The cat yawned, showing teeth.

Elena served. The ball cracked against the padel, a perfect diagonal that Marco couldn't return. They played in silence after that, the rhythm of their game — *thud, thud, thud* — filling the space where words used to be.

Later, in bed, Marco's hand found her waist. "We could try that clinic. Dr. Aranya. Bull's reputation, apparently."

She turned away. "I'm not infertile, Marco."

"Then what is it? Because you've been running from something since Christmas, and I'm tired of chasing."

The confession spilled out like water from a broken faucet. Not infertility. Not another man. Something simpler and crueler: she didn't want what he wanted. Had never wanted it. The life they'd built was a sculpture she'd posed for, not carved.

Marco sat up. The cat outside their window — had it followed them? — screamed.

"So what?" His voice cracked. "Twenty years, and this is the bull you feed me now?"

"It's not bull. It's the truth."

"The truth would have been useful before I sold everything for the house with the nursery. Before I—" His breath hitched. "Fuck."

She reached for him, but he was already standing, already moving toward the door already running from a room that had become a cage.

The next morning, the orange cat waited on her doorstep. Elena set down a bowl of tuna. It ate delicately, eyes never leaving hers.

"You knew," she said.

The cat licked its whiskers and walked away, tail high, toward the padel club where Marco's car was already parked. Some endings, she realized, were just games that had to finish their natural course.

She laced up her running shoes and headed out, not away from anything, but toward whatever came next.