The Weight of Water

The storm broke during our final padel match. Elena hit the ball hard, the glass walls of the court shivering with each impact. She played like she lived — with everything, no holding back. I'd loved that about her once, when we were twenty-two and believed passion was enough to sustain a lifetime.

'You're not even trying,' she said, wiping sweat from her forehead. Outside, lightning fractured the sky, brief as memory.

I wasn't. I couldn't. My father had died three days earlier, drowning during his morning swim at sixty-three. The autopsy would note the heart attack, the silent killer that dropped him into the Atlantic while my mother slept two counties away. I'd found out through a voicemail while sitting in a boardroom, pretending to care about quarterly projections.

'My father's gone,' I said, and the words felt like stones in my throat.

Elena's racquet lowered. The ball rolled away from her feet. 'Oh god. I didn't know.' She stepped closer, reaching for my hand. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I don't know.' I looked at our reflections in the glass court. 'Maybe because I don't know how to talk to you anymore. Maybe because the last real conversation we had was six months ago, when you called me a bull for refusing to quit my job.' That had been her word — stubborn, unfeeling, creature of habit.

She flinched. 'I was angry. I didn't mean—'

'Didn't you?' The air between us felt charged, heavy. 'You wanted someone else. Someone who'd move to Costa Rica and teach surfing. Instead you got me.'

Thunder rattled the court. Rain began to fall, streaking the glass like tears on a face we both refused to show each other. My father had loved the water. He'd taught me to swim in the lake behind our house, his patient hands supporting my belly as I learned to trust my own buoyancy. He'd been swimming his whole life, and in the end, the water had taken him back anyway.

'I'm sorry about your dad,' Elena said softly. 'I am. But I can't apologize for wanting more than this — this half-life we're living.'

'Neither can I.' I picked up my racquet. 'One more game?'

She studied me for a long moment. 'Sure. But I'm not going easy on you.'

She served while lightning struck again, and for the first time in years, I actually tried to return it.