Water Damage

The dog knew before I did.

Buster, our golden retriever, had stopped waiting by the door when Marcus's key turned in the lock. He'd lift his head from his bed, thump his tail twice—perfunctory, nothing like the full-bodied joy of three years ago—then return to sleep. Dogs sense emotional shifts before humans articulate them. They smell the cooling of affection like they smell rain.

We were playing padel at the club when it happened. Not real padel, but the bastardized version we'd invented over Sunday mimosas and half-truths. Marcus served hard. I returned harder. The glass walls of the court began to fog from the humidity of our breath and unspoken grievances.

"You're not listening," he said, hitting a forehand into the corner.

"I'm listening. I just disagree."

"There's a difference."

The ball sailed past me. I didn't move. I let it bounce against the back wall, that hollow sound of something not quite right.

Later, at dinner, I picked spinach from my teeth with my tongue. Marcus watched me, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth. The restaurant was loud, but we were in a bubble of silence. Our relationship had become like spinach—healthy, necessary, but somehow always getting stuck.

"Remember when we talked about everything?" he asked.

"We still talk."

"About work. About Buster's vet appointments. About whether to play padel on Saturdays. We don't talk about how we feel anymore."

I signaled for another glass of water. The waiter refilled it, and I watched the surface tremble. Water can be so many things: life-giving, destructive, something you drown in inch by inch. I'd been drowning for months, and Marcus had been watching me do it.

"Maybe some things don't need saying," I said.

He reached across the table and took my hand. His palm was damp, like the glass walls of the court. "Everything worth anything needs saying. Otherwise, you're just floating."

I looked at him and thought about the dog, how Buster had stopped greeting him at the door. How some mornings I woke up and Marcus was already gone to the office, how some nights he came home and I was already asleep. Two people occupying the same space, the same bed, living parallel lives that only occasionally intersected.

The water arrived. I drank it in one swallow.

"I'm lonely," I said. The words felt like spinach in my throat—hard to swallow, necessary to choke out. "And I think you are too."

Marcus nodded. He didn't let go of my hand.

Buster was waiting at the door when we got home. For the first time in months, he thumped his tail against the floor in something like joy. Maybe dogs can sense the possibility of repair, the way they sense storms. Maybe hope has a scent after all.