Bottom of the Ninth

The desert wind whispered through the palm fronds as Marcus stood at the edge of the infinity pool, his reflection distorting in the water's surface. Below, the Las Vegas sprawl twinkled like discarded jewels, but his mind was miles away—in a hospital room in Ohio where his father lay dying.

"You gonna stand there all night looking like a constipated sphinx?" Cheryl's voice carried across the pool deck. She sat at a nearby table, nursing her second martini, her corporate ID badge catching the light from the torches.

Marcus turned. His boss, Thompson—the absolute bull of a man who'd driven this startup into the ground with his stubborn refusal to pivot—was inside, probably already three scotches deep. Tomorrow's board meeting would decide everything: layoffs, possibly bankruptcy, certainly the end of the era Marcus had sacrificed five years of his life building.

"Just thinking," Marcus said.

"About your old man?" Cheryl softened. "I heard."

He nodded. His father had been a minor league **baseball** pitcher before an injury ended his career. He'd always told Marcus the same thing: *You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.* But Marcus had taken this shot, and now he was watching it curve wild, away from everything he'd promised himself he'd become.

"He asked me why I stayed," Marcus said suddenly. "Last time we spoke. Why I kept working for Thompson even after he—" He couldn't finish. After Thompson had stolen Marcus's product idea and claimed it as his own. After the bonuses that never came. After the promises, always the promises.

Cheryl set down her glass. "Because you believed in it. Because you're not a quitter."

"Or because I'm a coward."

The pool's automatic cleaning system churned, breaking the surface. A metaphor, Marcus thought bitterly. Everything just getting churned around, nothing ever really clean.

"Your dad's gonna be okay," Cheryl said, though they both knew it wasn't true. "And this board meeting? Whatever happens, you walk out with your head up. You're the only one who actually built anything real here. Thompson's just been riding your coattails since day one."

Marcus looked at his hands—calloused from typing, from building, from creating something out of nothing while his boss postured and preened. His father had taught him to recognize the difference between people who swung for the fences and people who just stood at home plate adjusting their cups.

Tomorrow he would resign. Tomorrow he would start his own company. Tomorrow he would stop being a supporting character in someone else's story.

But tonight, he would stand here at the edge of the water, watching the lights of the city blur like tears, and remember the sound of a ball hitting a catcher's mitt—the most perfect sound in the world, his father had said. The sound of something exactly where it was meant to be.