The Greens We Try to Become

David stood at the kitchen counter, methodically removing the thick stems from organic spinach. His wife Elena's new health regimen, another attempt to fix something that wasn't broken, or maybe everything was. He'd missed the call again—three times his iPhone had lit up with *Her* name during dinner, and he'd let it go to voicemail each time.

"You're playing padel tomorrow with Mark?" Elena asked, not looking up from her tablet. She knew the answer. She always knew.

"Yeah. Eight o'clock."

"Did I tell you my father's sending us his old baseball cards? From when he collected in the seventies?"

"You mentioned it." David dropped the spinach into the salad spinner. The plastic lid cracked against the bowl with a sound like something fragile finally giving way.

They'd been to that padel club twice. Once with Mark and his wife, once alone when David claimed he wanted to practice. The second time, *She* had been there too—supposedly coincidentally, supposedly just meeting friends for lunch afterward. The coincidence had stretched into drinks, then a hotel room that smelled like other people's mistakes, then three months of messages that David moved to a hidden folder.

The spinach spun round and round, centrifugal force pressing the leaves against the plastic mesh. He watched it through the transparent lid, thinking about how all of them were just spinning, waiting to be flung outward or drained dry.

"David?"

He looked up. Elena was watching him now, her expression unreadable in the harsh kitchen light.

"Your phone," she said softly. "It lit up again."

David stared at the iPhone screen on the counter. *Her* name, one more time. No message, just the call log. He could feel the weight of everything he hadn't said, every lie compounded by silence, every choice that had led to this moment where he stood over a bowl of wet spinach while his wife watched him decide whether to destroy their family or continue the slow erosion that had been happening for years anyway.

"I know," he said, and something in his voice—resignation, relief, he couldn't tell—made Elena close her eyes.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay."

The spinach spinner slowed. Outside, someone somewhere was hitting a baseball, the crack carrying through the warm evening air. Tomorrow he'd cancel the padel game. Tomorrow, everything would be different. Tonight, he just needed to finish making the salad.