The Court at Dusk

The padel ball ricocheted off the glass wall, a sharp crack that echoed across the empty court. Elena's back was to me, her swing practiced and precise, each stroke a reminder of everything I'd lost. We used to play Sunday mornings, back when we were still us. Now it was Tuesday at dusk, negotiated in therapy sessions like custody of our shared history.

I lunged for the return, my knees protesting. Forty-two and already feeling like a zombie—corporate life had done its work efficiently. Days blurred into spreadsheets and Zoom calls, into smiling at people I wanted to strangle. Elena had left three months ago, said she couldn't watch me disappear into myself anymore. She was right. I'd been gone for years.

"You're running on empty," she'd said the night she packed her bags. "I can't love a ghost."

Now she was seeing someone. Someone with vitality, someone who didn't need three coffees to face morning. I imagined him with her, imagined their Sunday padel matches, imagined the dog—our golden retriever, Buster—that she'd taken, his tail thumping against their floor instead of ours.

The ball sailed past me. I didn't chase it.

"Your serve," Elena called, but she was looking at me strangely, like she was seeing something for the first time. The court lights flickered on, illuminating the space between us.

"I miss him," I said. Not her. Him. The dog.

She softened. "He asks about you. When you're coming back."

I laughed bitterly. "Dogs don't understand divorce. They just understand absence."

"No," she said, stepping toward the net. "They understand loyalty. They remember who fed them, who walked them in the rain, who listened." Her voice caught. "Some things don't leave just because you sign papers."

The ball sat between us, a small yellow world suspended in the growing dark. I realized then that I wasn't a zombie—zombies don't feel this much. I was just afraid. Afraid that I'd already had everything worth having, and I'd let it slip through my fingers while I was busy becoming someone I didn't recognize.

"Can I see him?" I asked. "Buster."

Elena's smile was small, genuine. "Bring your racquet Sunday. He's been sleeping with your old racket."

The zombie in me took its first real breath in years.