Bottom of the Ninth

The crowd roared as the batter connected, but Mark barely noticed. He was staring at his iPhone, thumb hovering over the message that had arrived five minutes ago: *I need to see you. It's important.*

Beside him, Sarah sipped her beer. "You're missing it, babe. That was a home run."

Mark slid the phone into his pocket. "Yeah. Great."

She turned to him, eyes narrowing. "You've been checking that thing all night. Something wrong?"

He almost told her then. Almost said *Your mother just texted me. She knows.* But the seventh inning stretch began, and the moment passed.

They'd been married three years. Sarah's parents had never approved. Her father, a man stubborn as a bull when it came to his daughter's choices, had made his position clear from day one: Mark wasn't good enough. Not successful enough. Not from the right family.

Now Sarah's mother was inviting him to meet secretly. She wanted to talk. About what, Mark could only guess.

"You okay?" Sarah asked.

He looked at her—really looked at her—and felt the weight of everything he hadn't said. The job he'd taken that paid better but made him miserable, just to prove her father wrong. The friends he'd stopped seeing because they didn't fit her world. The gradual erosion of who he'd been when they met.

The baseball game didn't matter. The marriage didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the truth he'd been avoiding.

"Sarah," he said. "We need to talk."

She set down her beer. The stadium faded around them. For the first time in three years, they were really seeing each other.

"I know," she said quietly. "I've been waiting for you to say that."

Somewhere in the distance, the crowd erupted. Mark's iPhone buzzed again. He didn't check it. Some messages, he realized, weren't worth receiving. And some conversations couldn't wait any longer.