Bottom of the Ninth

The rain started in the fourth inning. Elena sat three rows from the field, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, watching a game she'd stopped caring about years ago. Beside her, David's hand rested on the armrest—his palm up, fingers slightly curled, the same way they'd looked that night she'd found the text messages.

"You're going to get us struck by lightning," she said, not looking at him. The storm had been brewing all afternoon, the sky turning that bruised purple that meant something was about to break.

"Elena." His voice had that careful quality, like he was approaching a frightened animal. "Can we please—"

"The game's almost over. Let's just watch the game."

Her hair was plastered to her neck in the humidity. She'd cut it all off two weeks after he moved out—a sharp, angular bob that made her look like someone who didn't give a damn anymore. David had noticed immediately, had reached out to touch it and pulled his hand back like he'd touched fire.

A crack of lightning split the sky, so bright it left spots in her vision. The crowd flinched, but the players kept running. Someone hit a home run, and the stadium erupted. Elena felt David's hand move closer to hers, his pinky brushing her knuckle. The same way he'd touched her at their wedding, at their anniversary dinners, the morning she told him she was pregnant with a child they'd lost three months later.

"I still have the ticket stubs," he said softly. "From every game we ever came to."

"Why?"

"Because I thought—" He stopped. The baseball announcer's voice boomed over the speakers, but Elena couldn't hear the words. She could only hear the sound of her own heart, the way she'd heard it when she watched him pack his boxes, when she deleted the photos from her phone, when she woke up at 3 AM in an empty bed.

"You thought what, David? That you could collect moments like baseball cards? That if you kept enough pieces of us, we'd somehow fit back together?"

He turned to her then, and she saw it: the gray in his hair that hadn't been there six months ago, the way his eyes were too bright, the raw, open look of someone who'd finally understood what they'd thrown away. His palm pressed against hers, warm and familiar and utterly insufficient.

"I thought," he said, "that if I showed up, you'd remember why you loved me."

The scoreboard clock ticked down. Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Full count. The rain began to fall, hard and sudden, washing away the chalk lines, the careful boundaries they'd drawn around themselves. Elena watched the batter swing, watched the ball arc through the rain toward a future that might or might not exist.

She didn't pull her hand away.