The Things We Carry

The padel court echoed with the sharp rhythm of rubber against ball, a violence we both needed. Marcus returned my serve with a grunt, sweat already darkening his shirt. We used to play like this every Thursday, back when our lives fit together like puzzle pieces we'd never questioned. Now, three months after Elena left him, this was all we had left.

"Your form's slipping," I said, volleying back.

Marcus didn't respond. He chased the ball to the fence, his breathing ragged. Forty-two years old and running himself into the ground every Thursday, as if he could sweat out the hollow space where his marriage used to be.

Elena had taken everything except the cat. A Bombay named Bast who now watched us through the glass doors of the clubhouse, yellow eyes unimpressed by our midlife crisis on clay. "He howls at night," Marcus had told me once, drunk on his balcony. "Like he's calling her home. And I stand there listening, wondering if I should howl too."

I missed my shot. The ball ricocheted off the back wall.

"You're thinking about her," I said, not a question.

Marcus bent double, hands on knees. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. "I ran into her at Whole Foods yesterday. She was buying wine. The expensive kind we used to save for anniversaries. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, and it was like being stabbed with something dull."

I walked to the net. "Marcus."

"I keep waiting for it to get easier. Everyone says it does. But I wake up every morning reaching across the bed, and then I remember, and then I have to figure out how to breathe again. And the cat—" He laughed bitterly. "The cat sleeps on her pillow like she's still there. Like he knows something I don't."

I thought about all the years we'd been friends, all the things I'd let him say and all the things I'd left unsaid. How I'd watched his marriage crack for years and never said a word. How I'd chosen comfort over honesty, and now this was where we ended up: two men chasing a ball back and forth, pretending it was enough.

"I should have told you," I said. "Before she left. I should have said something."

Marcus straightened up. His face had changed—something hard settling behind his eyes. "Yeah. You should have. But you didn't. And here we are."

He served again. The ball came at me fast and low, and I didn't dodge it. It hit me in the chest, hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

"Running away again," Marcus said quietly.

I looked at him. Really looked at him. "No," I said. "I'm staying right here."

The cat watched through the glass as we kept playing, both of us bruised and breathing, running toward something we couldn't name yet. But for the first time in months, it felt like we might actually be getting somewhere.