The Last Match

The rain started just as we walked onto the court—those first fat drops that presage a storm. Marcus adjusted his grip on the padel racket, his knuckles white. We hadn't spoken since the funeral, three weeks of silence stretching between us like the net dividing the court.

'You cut your hair,' he said, serving without looking at me.

The ball cracked against the back glass. I didn't return it. 'Yeah.'

'Why?'

I watched lightning stitch the sky behind him, a spiderweb fracture of white. 'Because Tom loved it long. He used to wrap it around his fist when we—' I stopped. 'Does it matter?'

Marcus's dog, a golden retriever named Barnaby who'd been Tom's, whined from the sidelines, tethered to the fence. The dog knew. Animals always did. Barnaby had been sleeping at the foot of my bed since it happened, since Marcus moved out.

'We were friends first,' Marcus said, his voice cracking. 'Me and Tom. Before you met him. Before you two—'

'Before I stole him? Is that what you're saying?'

'No.' He slammed his racket against the ground. 'I'm saying you're not the only one who lost him. But you're the one who got to hold his hand when he died. You're the one who got to say goodbye.' He stepped toward the net, rain plastering his shirt to his chest. 'I wasn't even there, Elena. I was working. Always working.'

The sky opened. Thunder shook the glass walls of the court.

'He asked for you,' I said, the truth I'd been carrying like a stone. 'In the end. Through the morphine, he kept saying your name. I called you. I called you seven times.'

Marcus's face crumbled. He looked like a child. 'I thought it was a telemarketer. I kept declining the calls.'

We stood there in the downpour, two people who had loved the same man in different ways, neither enough to save him. Barnaby barked once, sharp and sudden.

'I'm done grieving angry,' I said, walking to the sideline. I unclipped the dog, who pressed his wet body against my leg. 'Play another match? Like we used to, before everything got complicated?'

Marcus wiped his face with his shirt. Whether it was rain or tears, I couldn't tell. 'Yeah,' he said softly. 'Yeah, I'd like that.'

We played until our hands were numb and the court flooded, until we were just two people in the rain, learning how to be friends again in the wreckage of what we'd lost.