The Last Game

The iPhone buzzed against the bench, third time in ten minutes. Sarah ignored it. She adjusted her grip on the padel racket, the sweat making her palms slick against the handle. Across the net, Mark's phone kept lighting up too—his wife, probably, wondering where he was.

"Your serve," Mark said, but his eyes kept drifting to the glowing screen.

Sarah hit the ball hard. It smacked against the back glass, the sound echoing in the empty club. Thursday night, 9 PM, and they were the only ones left. Everyone else had lives to get back to.

"You going to answer that?" she asked.

"Probably not." Mark bent to tie his shoe, avoiding her eyes. "Lisa's been texting all day. She knows something's wrong."

Sarah's phone buzzed again. This time she looked. The message from David: "I can't do this anymore. I'm staying at the hotel."

Her dog, Buster, was probably waiting at home. She'd forgotten to walk him before rushing to the club—again. The thought gnawed at her, the way everything did lately. The small failures piling up like debts she couldn't pay.

"My husband left," she said suddenly. The ball hit the wall behind her with a hollow thud.

Mark straightened up slowly. "Sarah..."

"Today. This morning. While I was feeding the dog." She pressed the iPhone screen until it went dark. "He said I'm never present. Always somewhere else in my head. Always on this court with you."

The silence stretched between them, heavy and sudden.

"You know what's funny?" Sarah wiped her face with her wrist. "I come here because it's the only place I don't think about everything that's wrong. But maybe this is what's wrong. Maybe I'm just hiding."

Mark's phone buzzed again. He picked it up this time, read something, and put it in his pocket. "My wife thinks I'm having an affair."

"Are you?"

"No." His voice caught. "But she's right to be suspicious. I'm here every Thursday instead of at home. I'd rather be here than with her. That's its own kind of betrayal, isn't it?"

They stood there as the overhead lights flickered—time's up for the court booking. Two middle-aged people holding rackets they'd bought to feel something, anything, besides the weight of their own lives.

"I should go," Sarah said. "Buster needs dinner."

"Yeah. Me too."

But neither moved.

The iPhone buzzed again. Sarah didn't look. For once, the only thing she was present for was exactly where she stood.