Bottom of the Ninth

Marcus sat in Section 214, seat 12, nursing a warm beer he'd stopped tasting three innings ago. Around him, the crowd roared at something—a home run, maybe, or just the mascot tumbling into the bullpen. He couldn't tell. He hadn't really been present since the divorce papers landed six months ago, since the partnership track at the firm dissolved into shame-faced whispers in the breakroom. He was moving through life on autopilot, a corporate zombie in an increasingly unwashed suit.

"You look like shit, Marc."

He didn't turn. He knew that voice. Sarah—his oldest friend, the one who'd stopped calling when he cancelled their monthly catch-ups for the fourth time in a row, the one who'd sent a single text after the funeral: *I'm here if you need anything.* He never replied.

"I'm good," he said, still watching the field.

"Bullshit." She dropped into the seat beside him, smelling like vanilla and expensive wine. "I saw you on LinkedIn. New firm, same dead eyes. What are you doing at a baseball game alone on a Tuesday? You hate baseball."

"My dad loved it. Today's his birthday."

The silence stretched between them, heavy with three years of unsaid things. Baseball had been her father's thing too, back when they were seventeen and drinking cheap vodka in the bleachers, making promises about who they'd become. She was supposed to be a photographer. He was supposed to be happy.

"I'm getting married," she said quietly.

The words hit him like a physical blow. He turned finally, saw the diamond on her finger, saw the exhaustion etched around eyes that still held that familiar spark. Something inside him cracked open—a wound he'd forgotten he was carrying.

"To who?"

"Nobody you know. He's a veterinarian. He listens. He asks me how my day was and actually waits for the answer." She laughed without humor. "He doesn't know about us, about that summer. He doesn't know I still sometimes wake up reaching for someone who isn't there."

The organist struck up a familiar tune. The crowd rose for the seventh-inning stretch. Marcus felt himself standing too, muscle memory from all the times his father had dragged him here as a kid, before the dementia, before he forgot his own son's name.

"I'm dead inside, Sarah," he said, the truth finally finding its way out. "I go to work, I bill hours, I come home to an empty apartment. I haven't taken a photograph in seven years. I haven't felt anything since you moved to Chicago."

She reached for his hand, her palm warm against his cold fingers. "So fix it, you coward. Quit the job you hate. Take the pictures. Stop waiting for permission to live again."

Below them, a player rounded third base, heading for home. The crowd's roar swelled to something like religious ecstasy. Marcus squeezed Sarah's hand, then let it go.

"I will," he said. "After this inning."