The Last Serve

Elena had been gone for three weeks when the cable finally got cut. Marcus stood in the living room, the technician's clipboard resting on the cardboard box that held what remained of their life together. The guy was young, couldn't have been more than twenty-two, chewing gum with that casual indifference of someone who's seen too many marriages end in disconnected services.

"You want to keep the internet?" the kid asked. "I can bundle it."

Marcus thought about saying yes — he'd need something to fill the silence — but shook his head. He'd been running every morning at 5 AM, logging miles he didn't feel, pushing his body until his lungs burned and the memories blurred. The cable bill was just another line item in the life they'd built together, another thread pulling loose.

He paid the technician and watched the van pull away. Then he grabbed his racquet bag from the closet, the one Elena had bought him for his birthday two years ago. Padel had been their thing — Saturday mornings at the club, followed by brunch and that comfortable domestic routine that had felt like forever until it didn't. She was better than him, always had been. Her backhand slice could dismantle him in three rallies.

The courts were empty when he arrived. It was Tuesday morning, the time slot they'd surrendered when she started traveling more for work. Marcus stood at the service line, ball machine loaded, and began to hit. Serve. Volley. Smash. The rhythm of it — the satisfying thwack of ball against glass, the way his body remembered what his mind was still trying to process.

He'd been running from this conversation for months. Not the big dramatic fight, but the quiet accumulation of disappointments, the way she'd stopped asking about his day, how he'd stopped noticing hers. The cable bill had been in her name. The padel membership was his. They'd untangled everything so efficiently, like they'd been planning for it all along.

Marcus served the last ball, watched it bounce against the back wall, and didn't move to retrieve it. Standing there in the empty court, sweat dripping down his spine, he finally understood what Elena had meant when she said she was tired of them both pretending. Some games you win. Some you lose. And some — the ones that matter — you walk away from before either becomes true.

He shouldered his bag and left the court behind, his footsteps echoing on the pavement, running toward nothing at all.