The Color of Goodbye

The orange slice floated in her gin and tonic, a citrus sun sinking into an artificial sea. Elena watched it from across the padel court, where Richard was already warming up his serve, his movements precise, practiced, devoid of joy. Twenty years of marriage had distilled itself into this: Thursday evening matches at the club, his gray hair—once thick and dark, now thinning at the temples—gleaming under the floodlights.

"You coming?" he called out, not really asking. The ball ricocheted off the glass wall, that familiar *thwack* that had punctuated their Thursday nights for a decade.

She stirred her drink. The orange had released its essence, tinting the gin a pale, watery gold. Like everything else between them now—diluted, weakened by too much exposure. "I think I'll skip tonight."

Richard's racquet froze mid-swing. He turned, and for the first time in months, really looked at her. The fluorescent lights caught the strands of copper in her hair—the same auburn that had made him fall in love with her in college, now enhanced by monthly visits to a salon that charged too much for lies.

"Skip?" He said it like she'd proposed murder. "The Hendersons are coming. We talked about this at dinner."

"We talked about the Hendersons' renovation project," she corrected him. "We didn't talk about me wanting to spend another evening watching you play padel with a man who thinks enthusiasm is a character flaw."

Something shifted in his face—the defensive set of his jaw softening into something like hurt, or perhaps just the shock of an unexpected truth. He walked toward her, the squeak of his sneakers on the court surface like a metronome counting down their remaining time.

"El, are you... is everything okay?"

She reached for the orange slice, squeezed it until its juices ran down her fingers. Sticky, sour, real. "No. And I don't think it has been for a long time."

The ball, forgotten, continued its lonely bounce against the glass walls behind them. *Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.* A heartbeat counting down to something—ending or beginning, she couldn't tell yet. Only that the artificial orange light of the court couldn't hide the truth anymore.