The Water We Run Through

The ball hit the padel court with that distinctive hollow pop—sounding almost like a bone snapping—and Marcos watched it bounce toward the fence. He wasn't running for it. Forty-two years old and he'd stopped running for things.

His hair, what was left of it, dripped with sweat as he leaned against the glass wall. Carla's ex-husband had been right about him: he had the endurance of a dead fish. She'd left him six months ago for a man who still ran marathons, who still possessed that forward momentum that Marcos had somehow misplaced along the way.

"You're letting everything past you," Elena said from the other side of the court. She wasn't talking about the game. She never talked about the game.

"I'm conserving energy."

"For what? The next time Stevenson decides to lower the boom?" She shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging with the motion. "We both know he's grooming that wunderkind from Cambridge. You're not sleeping because of him. I see you checking your phone at 3 AM like a nervous lover."

Stevenson—his boss, the bull who charged through meetings with zero regard for the china shop of others' careers. Marcos had stopped trying to dodge him. He just stood there, waiting for impact.

"Maybe I'm done fighting," Marcos said. "Maybe some people are just meant to be trampled."

Elena walked to the water cooler, filled a paper cup, and extended it toward him. "You know what I think? I think you're like water. You think you're yielding, but you're actually just drowning everything around you with your passivity. Water always seeks the lowest point, Marcos. Stop settling."

He took the cup. His hands were trembling slightly—had they always done that? The padel court blurred at the edges.

"Carla's getting married," he said, the words leaving him before he could call them back. "To the marathon guy."

Elena's expression softened. "And you're still standing here, letting the game play you instead of the other way around."

Marcos looked at the cup of water in his hand—clear, lifeless, reflecting his own tired face back at him. He thought about Stevenson, about Carla, about the years he'd spent being the person who took it, who absorbed it, who was there when everyone else was done with their grand gestures and needed someone steady to mop up the aftermath.

He poured the water onto the court.

"Pick up the ball," Marcos said. "I'm not done yet."

Elena grinned, tossing him the ball like a challenge. "Finally decided to stop acting like you're in someone else's story?"

"No," Marcos said, catching it. "Just realized I can be a bull too."