The Games We Play

He watched her from the balcony, **swimming** laps in the infinity pool below. Sarah moved through the water with that same determined grace she'd brought to their marriage for seventeen years — precise, methodical, unknowably distant. The pool water caught the dying light, turning the same bruised **orange** as the sunset spreading across the horizon.

Mark checked his watch again. 7:14 PM. Their dinner reservation was in sixteen minutes. They were supposed to be playing **padel** at 4:00, but Sarah had claimed a headache and disappeared. He'd found her later, sitting alone on the beach, staring at nothing.

The resort brochure had promised rejuvenation. Instead, they'd spent three days in exquisite torture — eating meals they couldn't taste, sleeping in beds that felt foreign, playing games that weren't really games at all.

Inside their suite, the TV flickered silently. A **baseball** game from some American channel he'd left on for background noise. He'd stopped watching years ago, back when his father still called to discuss box scores. Dad had died in March; Sarah had attended the funeral with appropriate composure, crying precisely the right amount at precisely the right moments.

She emerged from the pool now, water dripping from her skin like something she was trying to shed. Mark imagined himself saying something — anything — that might pierce the membrane between them. But words had become like those old baseball cards he collected as a kid: valuable, rare, and kept in plastic, never touched.

"You're thinking about her again," Sarah said from the doorway, toweling her hair. Not an accusation. Just a fact.

"I'm thinking about us," he replied, which was also true, because these days, the two thoughts were inseparable.

She pressed her lips together, that thin line he'd come to dread. "I spoke to David. He can draft the papers by next week."

The baseball game on TV erupted in cheers. Someone had hit a home run.

"Next week," Mark repeated. It wasn't a question. It was an agreement.

They'd play the games they were supposed to play. They'd eat the dinner they'd reserved. They'd return to their separate lives and call it maturity, call it growth, call it whatever made it sound less like surrender.

Sarah moved past him into the room, her skin still smelling of chlorine and something floral he'd bought her years ago. Mark watched the sun finally disappear, leaving them in that familiar darkness where they'd both become so expert at swimming alone.