The Weight of Summer

The sun beat down on the padel court, relentless as Marcus's backhand. Elena watched from the sidelines, nursing a gin and tonic she'd asked the bartender to make weak, though she hadn't specified *how* weak. It was mostly tonic now.

"You're playing like a bull in a china shop," she called out when he slammed another ball into the fence. Marcus didn't turn. He was in that zone where nothing existed but the game, the sweat, the proving.

His iphone sat on the bench beside her, screen lighting up every few minutes with work emails. She'd stopped checking. The third notification from *her* had appeared an hour ago: Sarah, the new associate. Cute, ambitious, exactly who Marcus had been at twenty-five.

A stray cat — gray, mangy, missing half an ear — had been padding around the courts all afternoon. It reminded Elena of their first apartment, of the kitten they'd rescued together, of promises made in a decade-old kitchen that now felt like someone else's life.

"Game," Marcus said, striding over, dripping. He grabbed his phone, thumbed through messages without looking at her. "Sarah says the merger looks good. Might have to fly back to New York early."

"But we paid for the whole week."

"Business, El. You know how it is."

She did. She knew how it had been for three years, how the late nights had gotten later, how the business trips had multiplied, how the phone face-up on the nightstand had become the third person in their marriage.

The cat wound around her ankles, purring. She picked it up.

"You're not taking that thing back to the hotel."

"No," she said. "I'm not."

"Then what?"

"Then I suppose you'll have to bear the consequences, won't you?"

The cat purred against her chest. Marcus looked at her — really looked at her — for the first time in months. Something flickered behind his eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or fear.

"El?"

"Go pack, Marcus. Your flight's probably tomorrow morning."

He stood there, mouth half-open, as she walked toward the hotel with the cat. She didn't look back. Some things, she realized, you simply outgrow.