The Color of Leaving

The padel court echoed with the hollow thwack of ball against racquet, a rhythm that had become the soundtrack to our dying marriage.

I watched David from across the net—his movements mechanical, eyes fixed on nothing beyond the ball's arc. After twelve years, my husband had become something unexpected: a zombie in designer resort wear, animated only by the force of habit. This Cancun vacation was supposed to resurrect us. Instead, it was performing the autopsy.

At breakfast, I speared cubes of papaya with increasing aggression. The fruit tasted like disappointment—sweet going down, cloying after. I remembered the David who used to peel oranges for me on Sunday mornings, stripping the pith with surgical precision, offering segments like small sacrifices. Now he scrolled through emails while chewing, the juice forgotten on his chin.

"You're doing it again," I said, gesturing at his phone.

"What?"

"Being here without being here."

He shrugged—a gesture that had become its own language between us. "I'm checking on the merger."

"You're a zombie, David. You died somewhere around year eight, and neither of us noticed."

The accusation hung between us like the humidity—heavy, suffocating. Later that afternoon, I found myself swimming alone in the infinity pool. The water turned molten orange as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in violent hues that demanded to be felt.

I floated on my back, watching the color bleed into darkness, and understood something I'd been resisting for months: sometimes love doesn't die with a scream. It rots quietly, like forgotten fruit on a counter, and you wake up one day realizing you've been spooning a corpse for years.

David came to the pool's edge, backlit by the orange afterglow. For a moment, the zombie flickered—something like recognition in his eyes, perhaps even grief. But he only asked if I wanted to grab dinner at the Mexican place again.

I treaded water, watching the last of the light disappear. "No," I said, finally understanding that some dead things don't come back. "I think I'll stay here a while longer."

The orange faded to purple, then black. I swam toward the deep end, away from the shore, toward whatever came next.