The Color of Goodbye

The morning sun hit the **baseball** field where Marco used to coach, the empty dugout collecting shadows like old regrets. Elena stood at her apartment window, watching, her hand curling around a glass of **water** that had gone warm hours ago.

Three weeks since he'd left. Since he'd said that crushing thing: that he couldn't do this anymore, couldn't pretend that 37 was too young to feel this tired.

She took her morning **vitamin** with practiced mechanical motion—the D supplement he'd bought her during his brief health obsession phase. The bottle sat on the counter like an accusation.

Her phone buzzed. A work notification she ignored. The office drama with Jackson, the stolen client, the whispered accusations in the breakroom—none of it mattered. Not compared to this hollowed-out feeling she couldn't shake.

At 3 PM she found herself at the **padel** court, watching strangers play through the fence. She'd taken up the sport because Marco had found it pretentious—"tennis for people who can't commit," he'd said—and maybe that's why she kept coming. The ball's rhythmic thwack against the glass walls was almost hypnotic.

"You've been here every day this week."

Elena turned. A woman she'd noticed before—always playing alone, always leaving before the sun went down. "Haven't we all."

The woman smiled, tired around the eyes. "Fair." She held out an **orange**, already peeled. "You look like you could use this."

Elena accepted it, the citrus scent sharp against everything else she'd been holding in. "I keep coming here hoping something will make sense again."

"It won't," the woman said, not unkindly. "But eventually you'll start noticing other things. The sound of the ball. The way the light hits at 4 PM. The fact that oranges actually taste like something real."

Elena took a bite. Juice ran down her thumb. For the first time in three weeks, something tasted exactly as it should.

"I'm Sarah, by the way."

"Elena."

They played padel until dusk, neither discussing why they were both there. Some things didn't need saying. The baseball field would still be empty tomorrow. The vitamin bottle would still sit on her counter. But the orange had been real. The game had been real.

That night, Elena slept for seven hours straight.