The Score We Settle

The padel court echoed with the sharp *thwack* of racquet against ball, a rhythm that had become the soundtrack to our unraveling. Elena's ponytail swung like a metronome as she returned serve, her back to me, just as it had been for three months now. I watched from the bench, my iPhone burning a hole in my pocket with a notification I wouldn't check—that was the rule we'd made when we started these Tuesday matches, a fragile truce in the aftermath of what I'd found on her phone last November.

"You're up," she called, not turning around. Her voice carried that careful neutrality that had replaced everything else between us.

I stood, knees popping—forty-two arriving with its own soundtrack. We'd been playing padel together for seven years, back when we still touched without flinching, back when baseball was just something we watched over Sunday takeout instead of a metaphor for how many chances you get before you strike out. I remembered proposing at home plate during that minor league game, how she'd laughed and said yes as the crowd cheered, as if the universe itself had stamped its approval.

Now the universe seemed mostly indifferent.

The match played out in silence except for the ball, the shoes, the breathing. We'd stopped keeping score months ago, though we still played to win. Something about the physicality of it, the way padel demands you be present in every square foot of that enclosed court, made it easier than talking. Easier than the sessions where we sat across from each other in neutral rooms with soft lighting and someone who'd nod and say things like "processing" and "moving forward."

"We need to stop meeting like this," I said afterward, as we sat on the bench, towels around our necks. The sentence hung there, freighted with everything it had meant when I'd first whispered it to her in a crowded bar eleven years ago, everything it meant now.

Elena looked at her phone. "I know."

"I'm not talking about padel."

"I know," she said again, softer this time. "But I'm still not ready to not see you every Tuesday. Is that pathetic?"

"It's honest," I said, because at this point, honesty was all we had left. "And maybe that's worse."

She'd started running after work lately—she'd told me that last week, as if it were casual information rather than a confession that she was building a life I no longer fit inside. I pictured her running along the river at dusk, the way the light would catch her hair, how she must look now to strangers who saw just a woman in motion, not someone carrying the whole history of us like something fragile.

My phone buzzed again. We both looked at it.

"Are you going to—" she started.

"No," I said. "Whatever it is, it can wait."

"Carlos," she said, my name sounding like both question and answer, like a word she was testing to see if it still meant something.

The baseball stadium lights flickered on in the distance across the highway, a distant galaxy coming alive. Spring training had just ended. Opening day. Somewhere, thousands of people were cheering for beginnings.

"Same time next week?" I asked, even though I knew—knew with that certainty that lives in the pit of your stomach, that knowledge that arrives at 3 AM and won't let you sleep—that we were running on fumes, that this particular game had gone into extra innings and nobody was keeping score anymore but everyone was tired.

Elena stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She looked at me for a long moment, as if memorizing something. As if committing to memory the way the court lights caught the silver beginning to show at my temples, the way my shoulders slumped when I thought she wasn't looking.

"I don't think so," she said. "I think I need to start running alone."