The Last Match Point

The Caribbean sun beat down on the padel court as Elena smashed another winner past my lumbering reach. She didn't even smile. Three years of marriage, and I'd become the person she played against, not with.

'Water?' I asked afterward, gesturing to the cooler on the sidelines.

She shook her head, already checking her phone. 'I'm going to the spa.'

That night, at the overpriced resort restaurant, I watched her push her salmon around her plate. The garnish—a wilted spinach leaf—sat untouched, like everything else between us lately. I wanted to reach across the table, to say something that would matter. Instead, I made small talk about the weather.

She excused herself early. I found her later by the pool, staring at the water feature in the center—a modern sculpture that was supposed to be a sphinx but looked more like a blob. The resort's attempt at mystery, at depth.

'My dad taught me to catch a baseball when I was seven,' I said, surprising myself. 'He said if you could track something moving that fast, you could handle anything life threw at you.'

Elena turned, her face half in shadow. 'And did you?'

I thought about the promotion I'd turned down to follow her career. The friends I'd stopped calling. The version of myself I'd slowly abandoned, like a player traded mid-season.

'The trick about baseball,' I continued, 'is that even the best hitters fail seven times out of ten. You just have to keep swinging.'

She touched her necklace, the silver one I'd given her last Christmas. 'What if I don't want to play anymore?'

The words hung between us, heavier than the humid air. Somewhere distant, I heard laughter from the bar.

'Then,' I said, 'we need to stop pretending it's just a game.'

The sphinx fountain bubbled behind us, its ripples spreading outward, relentless and small.