The Last Game at Sunset

Marcus drove us to the club in silence, the Tesla humming through streets that had become unfamiliar in the three months since I'd last been outside the office zone. The corporate pyramid had finally collapsed—literally, in the case of the Merrill building downtown—and with it, the endless meetings that had turned me into something resembling a zombie, hollowed out by fifty-hour weeks and the constant performance of having it together.

"You look like shit," he said, not unkindly, tossing me a padel racket. "Even worse than usual."

"The buyout package came through," I said, weighing the racket in my hand. The grip felt foreign. "I took it."

Marcus stopped bouncing the ball against the concrete. He just looked at me—really looked, the way he used to before we both got consumed by the climb, before pyramid schemes of corporate advancement had seemed like the only way to live. Before I'd stopped calling.

"You're leaving?"

"I'm already gone," I said. "Just working out notice."

We played in the dying light of an autumn evening, the glass walls of the court reflecting the sunset in oranges and bruised purples. I moved stiffly at first, my body remembering rhythms that my mind had tried to forget. Then, somewhere in the second set, something broke open inside me. The sheer physical joy of movement, of the ball's satisfying pop against the strings, of Marcus's laugh when I shanked a serve into the net—god, I'd forgotten what it felt like to not be useful, to just be.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked afterward, sitting on the bench as we shared a water bottle.

"That I was miserable? That I'd become the kind of person who works through their mother's birthday dinner?" I shook my head. "You'd have tried to fix it. You always do."

He was quiet for a moment. "That's what friends do, asshole."

"I know," I said. "I think that's why I didn't. I didn't want to be saved. I wanted to be seen."

The sun dipped below the horizon, and the floodlights flickered on, illuminating everything with harsh clarity. The corporate pyramids downtown were just silhouettes now, meaningless against the actual sky.

"Next week," Marcus said, "same time? You're not too good for recreational sports now that you're a free man."

I laughed, and it surprised me—how genuine it sounded, how unfamiliar the sensation felt. "Next week."

Walking to the car, I could feel the zombie parts of myself beginning to recede, not all at once, but enough. Enough to remember what it meant to be alive among the living, to have a friend who'd show up for the last game even after you'd stopped showing up for yourself.