The Score We Keep

The padel court echoed with the sharp staccato of橡胶 against glass walls. Six years since Elena and I had stood on opposite sides of any net, and here we were, sweating through a Thursday evening reunion she'd proposed with surgical precision.

"Your form hasn't changed," she called out, palm pressed against her knee between rallies. Her engagement ring caught the fluorescent lights—a diamond that probably cost more than my entire quarterly revenue. "Still chasing every ball like it owes you money."

"Old habits." I adjusted my grip on the racket, wondering if she noticed the tremor in my hand. She wouldn't. Elena had always been selectively blind to discomfort she couldn't monetize.

We'd been inseparable in college—two accounting majors dreaming of starting a firm together, solving the world's financial injustices one spreadsheet at a time. Then came the job offer from her father's conglomerate. The careful silence that followed. The way she stopped returning calls until the messages felt too pathetic to continue.

Now she was CFO before thirty, and I was watching my small practice bleed clients through the recession.

"Match point," she said, and something in her voice cracked. Just for a second.

I served hard. She returned it lazily, sending the ball wide—uncharacteristically, deliberately.

The ball sailed past me. Game over.

"You let me win," I said, dropping my racket.

She leaned against the glass wall, studying her palm like it contained an answer we both needed. "I heard about the loan denial, Mara."

My chest tightened. "I didn't tell you that."

"You didn't have to." She straightened up, and for the first time all evening, her expression was unreadable. "I'm your friend. Not just someone you used to know."

The padel court felt very small suddenly. "Are you?"

Elena reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. "I can't fix everything, but I know someone at First National. He owes me a favor—a real one, not the transactional kind you're thinking of." She slid her phone across the court floor. "Call him. Or don't. But stop assuming you know what I'll do."

I looked at her phone, then at the friend I'd spent six years resenting. The score was different than I'd calculated.

"Next Thursday?" I asked.

She smiled, and it was the smile I remembered from dorm rooms at 3 AM. "Bring your A game this time. I won't go easy on you twice."