Three Courts

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter beneath the dog's water bowl, the corner curling from the humidity. Barnaby, a golden retriever with mismatched eyes and joint problems, nudged my hand with his wet snout. He needed his pills, same as always. Some things remained constant.

"Are you coming?" Elena called from the driveway. She had her padel racket in hand, the neon green grip matching her sports bra. We'd met on a court four years ago—she'd crushed me in straight sets, then bought me a drink. Now we played separate games.

"Barnaby needs his walk," I said, though we both knew I was stalling.

She drove off without another word. The silence settled heavy as old dust.

I took Barnaby to the park where the men played baseball on Sunday mornings, their jerseys stretching over midsections grown soft with marriage and mortgages. I watched them from the bench, the dog asleep at my feet. Baseball had been my father's religion—hours of practice in the backyard, his voice carrying across the diamond: "Keep your eye on the ball." He'd died before seeing me give it up for law school, before I met Elena, before anything that mattered.

A foul ball arced toward us. Barnaby didn't stir. The ball landed three feet away, a white sphere against dead grass. I picked it up, feeling the seams, the weight of something that could fly so far if hit just right.

"You gonna throw that back?" one of the men called out.

I looked at the ball, at the dog, at the empty space beside me where Elena should have been sitting. Something cracked open inside my chest—not clean like a bat hitting a ball, but messy and slow.

"No," I said, and put it in my pocket.

Barnaby woke, stretched, and looked at me with those mismatched eyes, waiting. I scratched behind his ears, thinking about games with rules I couldn't follow anymore, about the difference between playing and not playing at all.

"Come on," I told him. "Let's go home."