The Last Match

The iphone face-down on the bench, screen lighting up with messages I pretended not to see. Sarah's phone. Again. Our monthly padel match had become less about sport and more about avoidance—me avoiding what I knew, her avoiding me.

I adjusted my racket, watching her stretch. Her form was perfect, athletic grace belying the rot underneath. Three years of marriage, two of them a lie. The padel court echoed with the thwack of balls, our silence louder than any conversation.

'I'm meeting Marcus for dinner after,' she said, bending to retrieve a ball. 'Won't be home late.' Marcus. Her trainer. The same Marcus whose texts had been lighting up her iphone like fireworks since November.

I remembered making dinner that first year—fresh spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, her favorite. She'd laughed, spinach stuck to her teeth, and I'd thought: this is happiness. Now that memory felt like evidence of a crime.

'The spinach in the fridge is probably wilted by now,' I said, serving hard. She returned it, her movements automatic, mind elsewhere.

'What?'

'Spinach. From last week. Like us.' The ball hit the fence, bouncing away.

She stopped. 'David—'

'Marcus texts you during our matches.' I wasn't asking. 'I saw. Months ago.'

The game ended not with a score but with the truth. We sat on the bench, iphone between us like a weapon. She'd met Marcus at the gym, started with padel lessons, ended with an affair. She was sorry, she said. She loved me, she said. She wanted to work it out, she said.

I picked up her phone, scrolled through messages. 'Start dinner without me,' 'staying late for training,' 'love you.' lies disguised as love, served with the same casual cruelty as that wilted spinach in our refrigerator.

'I'll move out this weekend,' I said.

She cried. I didn't.

Walking to my car, I remembered something: the first time she made me that spinach salad, she'd used too much dressing. Too much of everything, really. But I'd eaten it anyway, pretending it was perfect, because I wanted it to be.

Some matches you lose before they even begin.