The Unspoken Score

Sarah stood at the kitchen counter, chopping spinach with rhythmic precision. The knife hit the cutting board with a dull thud—thud, thud, thud—matching the cadence of her thoughts. Behind her, Mark sat at the kitchen island, his face illuminated by the glow of his iPhone as he scrolled through baseball statistics from a game he hadn't watched.

"Did you hear me?" she asked, her voice tight.

"Hmm?" Mark didn't look up. "Something about the weekend?"

"I said we're having dinner with the Harrisons on Saturday. They invited us to play padel afterward."

Mark finally looked up, his expression blank. "Padel? Since when do we play padel?"

"Since I'm trying to save us."

The words hung between them, raw and exposed. Sarah turned back to her spinach, her hands trembling slightly. She could feel Mark's gaze on her back, heavy with the weight of five years of unsaid things.

"You think hitting a ball around a court is going to fix anything?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"No," she said, "but showing up might."

She dumped the spinach into the sizzling pan, watching it wilt and shrink, just like she felt herself doing, slowly and imperceptibly, until there was almost nothing left of who she'd been when they met. The version of herself that had believed love was enough, that connection didn't require maintenance, that the right person would just know.

Mark stood up and walked to the stove, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. For a moment, she let herself lean into him, breathing in the familiar scent of cedar and old cologne. But then his phone chimed with a baseball notification, and she felt his attention drift away like smoke.

"Leave it," she whispered.

He hesitated, then stepped away to check the score.

Sarah stirred the spinach without looking at him. The game had ended long ago, but somehow, they were still playing, still keeping score, still pretending they didn't know who was winning.