The Riddle of Empty Courts

The ball skidded across the padel court, a sharp crack against the glass wall that echoed Marcus's internal state. At forty-seven, he found himself here every Tuesday with Richard—a man who operated like a sphinx, inscrutable and ancient despite being three years his junior. Richard never revealed his hand in business or in friendship, his face a mask that guarded secrets Marcus had spent years trying to decode.

Marcus's iphone buzzed in his bag again. Sarah, his ex-wife, probably asking about the summer holiday schedule they'd been negotiating for months. The device had become his tether to a life he'd dismantled piece by piece—a house sold, dog shared, daughter split between two homes. He ignored it, the way he'd learned to ignore most things that required feeling.

"You're playing like shit," Richard observed, effortlessly returning a serve that would've caught most players flat-footed. "Bearing down on something?"

The word caught in Marcus's throat. Richard didn't know—couldn't know—that Marcus had been offered the Zurich promotion yesterday. The same Zurich he and Sarah had honeymooned in, eighteen years ago, when they still believed in forevers. The city where she'd told him, over coffee and croissants, that she wanted children. The city where everything had begun.

And now, potentially, where his marriage's aftermath would send him again.

"Just tired," Marcus said, hitting the ball into the net.

Richard studied him, sphinx-like in his unreadable expression, before walking to the bench to drink water. Marcus's phone lit up with a notification. Not Sarah this time—his daughter, sending a photo from her university dorm. A reminder that something good had come from the wreckage.

He picked up his racquet again. The match wasn't over, and neither was he. Some bears you fought, some you learned to carry, and some—you just learned to live beside.