The Palm Reader's Court

The padel court shimmered in the Cancun heat, a green glass box where Marcus and Elena used to play on Sunday mornings before everything went wrong. Now, three years and one separation later, they were both at the same corporate retreat — Marcus had flown in from London, Elena from Chicago. Their respective companies had merged, which meant they were legally obligated to pretend to be colleagues at a team-building resort.

"You should get your palm read," someone said by the pool bar. "There's a woman down by the beach who's supposed to be incredible."

Marcus found himself sitting across from an older woman with skin the color of cured tobacco. She took his hand, traced the lines on his palm with a fingernail that clicked against his skin.

"You're not living," she said, dropping his hand. "You're walking around, breathing, going through the motions. But inside? You've been dead for years."

Zombie. The word hung between them like smoke. He wanted to argue, to insist that he was happy, that the promotion was real, that the new relationship was working. But she'd already moved on to the next tourist.

That evening, he found Elena at the padel court, hitting balls against the glass wall alone. The rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack echoed across the resort. She wore the same wristband she'd worn when they played together — a faded fabric thing from a 5K they'd run back when they still did things together.

"The palm reader says I'm a zombie," he said, picking up a spare racquet.

Elena laughed, but there was no humor in it. "She told me I was running from something I couldn't outrun. Then she charged me forty dollars."

They played in silence, the old patterns returning — Marcus at the net, Elena smashing from the baseline. The ball flew between them, and for a moment, it was like nothing had changed. Then Marcus missed an easy volley, the ball bouncing off his palm instead of the strings.

"You always do that," Elena said. "You give up right when it matters."

"I didn't give up," he said, though they both knew he was talking about more than the point.

"You did. You checked out years ago. We both did." She hit the ball into the darkness beyond the court. "We've been zombies playing padel ever since."

Marcus walked to where the ball had landed, bent to retrieve it from beneath a palm tree. The fronds cast shadows across his hand — the same hand the woman had read that afternoon. He looked at the lines she'd traced, the life line, the heart line, the fate line. They all just looked like creases in skin.

When he straightened, Elena was watching him.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Finish the match," she said. "Then maybe actually wake up."