What We Swallow

The padel court echoed at midnight, each racket strike a sharp punctuation to the silence between us. Marcus played against the backboard, obsessively, sweat darkening his shirt, while I sat on the sidelines counting vitamin bottles in my head—D, B12, folic acid, the alphabet of hope we'd been swallowing for three years.

"You coming?" he called, not turning around.

I traced the lifeline on my palm with my thumb, something the fortune teller in Barcelona had done the week before we started trying. She'd promised three children, long life, love that endures. Now my palm felt like a map to nowhere, the lines mocking me with predictions that refused to materialize.

"I'm tired," I said, which wasn't the whole truth. I was tired of this game, this ritual we'd adopted since the third miscarriage—padel at strange hours in empty courts, as long as we were moving, we didn't have to speak.

Marcus finally faced me, chest heaving. In the harsh court lighting, I saw how much he'd aged this year. The vitamins sat in our kitchen cabinet like small monuments to failure—each morning, we took them with a weird faith, as if the right combination could knit together what kept breaking apart.

"My mother called," he said, bouncing the ball. "Asked about Christmas."

My palm went cold. "What did you say?"

"That we're busy. That work's crazy." He dribbled the ball, caught it. "What else is there to say?"

The truth sat between us like the net that divided the court—no one crosses it anymore. We'd become experts at playing on our own sides, careful not to volley too close to something raw. The padel was just the latest strategy, something we could do together that required no words, no vulnerability, no risk of disappointment.

I stood up, walked to the baseline. My hand went to my pocket, where I kept the vitamins I hadn't taken that morning. For months, I'd been flushing them instead—couldn't bear the ritual of trying, the daily reminder that my body was a project that needed fixing. But Marcus still took his, still believed.

"Serve," I said, and something in my voice made him look at me really look. His eyes found my palm, open and waiting, and maybe he saw what I'd finally understood: the lines on our hands don't promise anything. We just keep playing.

He tossed the ball up. His serve went long, and neither of us moved to return it.