The Game Before the Storm

You move like a zombie across the padel court, racket dangling from fingers gone numb three games ago. Marcus serves—sharp, aggressive, exactly like everything else about him these days. You haven't been real friends in months, maybe longer. Just two people who used to know each other, bound by habit and a Tuesday court reservation you keep forgetting to cancel.

The sky bruised purple an hour ago. Now lightning splits the horizon, close enough that the air tastes metallic. He doesn't notice. Or he doesn't care. Either way, it hurts the same.

"You going to play or what?" He bounces the ball, impatient, entitled.

You think about last night—how you'd gone swimming at 2 AM because sleep felt like surrender, how the water had been cold enough to make you feel something for the first time in weeks. How you'd floated on your back staring at the pool lights, wishing you could dissolve into the chlorine.

"I'm done," you say. It's barely a whisper.

"What?"

"With this. With us. With pretending." The racket hits the ground. The sound is stupidly loud. "I'm done."

Thunder rattles the court fence. The first drop of rain hits your cheek like a tear you're too proud to shed.

Marcus opens his mouth, then closes it. For once, he has nothing. That's when you realize: the zombie wasn't you. It was this thing you called friendship—dead but still walking around, eating everything that used to matter.

You turn and walk away as the sky opens up, and somewhere behind you, he's still standing there holding a ball that doesn't matter anymore.