The Shape of Leaving

The ball hit the padel racket with a sound like bones breaking, bouncing back over the net where Marco stood, his shirt already dark with sweat. Elena watched it arc toward her and thought about how they used to play baseball in college, how he'd pitch perfect strikes just to see her smile, how she'd pretend not to notice. Now everything he threw at her was wild.

She missed. The ball skidded into the fence.

"You're distracted," he said, not unkindly. He'd been saying that for months, since before her mother's diagnosis, since the promotion that made him work six-day weeks, since the nights she'd started lying awake beside him, swimming through dark waters of something that wasn't quite unhappiness but was nowhere near happiness either.

"Sorry," she said. "Long week."

They walked to the bench. His water bottle sat next to hers, labels facing opposite directions. Once, at a wedding, someone had called them a fox and a rabbit—him quick and clever, her soft and easily startled. She'd laughed then, flushed and charmed. Now she wondered if the fox ever got tired of chasing, if the rabbit ever wanted to stop running.

"The Harrison account," Marco said, wiping his forehead. "They want to meet next Tuesday. I might have to cancel dinner with your sister."

Again.

"It's fine," Elena said. "She understands."

"You bear so much," he said, and something in his voice made her look at him sharply. But he was just staring at his racket, turning it over in his hands. "I don't tell you enough. You just—you bear everything."

The word hung between them like smoke. What he meant was that she didn't complain, that she absorbed his absences and his moods and his vague promises about next quarter, next year, when things would settle down. What she heard was that he thought her capacity for endurance was the same as her capacity for joy.

They played another set. She won more points than she should have, and when they shook hands at the net, his palm was damp against hers.

"Good game," he said. "Same time next week?"

Elena looked at him—at the familiar lines around his eyes, at the way his hair curled when it was wet, at the man she'd loved for seven years without entirely knowing when she'd stopped. The sun was setting beyond the court. Somewhere, a dog barked. A whole world moved around them, indifferent and enormous.

"Actually," she said, and her voice didn't shake at all, "I think I'm done with padel."