Baseline Distance

She stared at the orange pill in her palm — Vitamin D3, 5000 IU, the doctor said her levels were "concerning." At 34, Elena thought, concerned should mean something more than blood work. Concerned should be about how Marcus hadn't looked her in the eye over dinner in six months, or how her cubicle felt less like workspace and more like coffin.

She dry-swallowed the pill with lukewarm water from the company dispenser, the kind that made hollow, echoing gulps in the breakroom — like something empty calling to something empty.

Back at her desk, she opened the drawer where she kept her lunch: a tangerine, already starting to soften at the edges. The same lunch every day. The same life every day. Her computer monitor glowed with a spreadsheet that needed updating by 5 PM, but her phone buzzed instead.

Marcus: 'Working late again.'

Not a question. An accusation wearing casual clothes.

She typed back, 'Baseball season starts tonight.'

He used to take her to games. Minor league, cheap seats, dusty summer evenings where they'd drink overpriced beer and she'd pretend to understand why he loved it. Something about the rhythm, he'd said. The way failure was built into the game — even the best batters fail seven times out of ten.

Now she watched alone through a streaming app, pixelated players moving across a tiny screen while her husband worked late at his own desk in his own office in their shared apartment, sleeping in the bed they'd bought together but no longer consecrated.

She peeled the orange, releasing its scent into the recycled air. Citrus and desperation. Something bright in all this gray.

On screen, a batter swung and missed. The announcer said something about momentum, about staying hydrated, about how the game wasn't over until the last out.

Elena deleted her draft response to Marcus — the one that asked when they'd stopped being teammates — and took another vitamin pill instead.

Some games, you played until the ninth inning. Others, you just learned to appreciate the hollow sound of water hitting the bottom of a paper cup.