Championships and Drowning

The third scotch sat heavy on her tongue as Elena watched the fountain's water arc and collapse, over and over, like a heart that refused to quit beating. Thirty-seven years old, partner at the firm by thirty-five, and she'd forgotten how to want something she couldn't bill by the hour.

A cat wound around her ankles—the stray that lived near the parking garage. Elena had started feeding it three months ago, when the divorce papers arrived. It was the only living thing that didn't look at her like she'd failed some test she hadn't known she was taking.

"You again," she muttered, setting the glass on her office balcony ledge. The cat jumped onto the railing, tail flicking.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus—her former best friend, the one who'd left the firm six months ago to, as he'd put it, "remember what human joy feels like." He'd sent a photo: himself holding a baseball glove, grinning like an idiot, some Sunday league game in the park.

Elena hadn't played since college. Hadn't thought about it in years. But suddenly she was seventeen again, standing in the outfield during regionals, the summer air thick with possibility, Marcus laughing from second base, their whole lives spread out before them like a promise neither of them knew how to keep.

The cat mewed, stretching toward her.

"I know," she said. "I miss him too."

Not Marcus. That was easy—happy for him, really. She missed who she'd been when they'd stood in that outfield together. The girl who'd believed she could hit every pitch, who'd thought ambition and happiness were the same thing, who hadn't realized how much of life was just watching water hit the same stones until they wore smooth.

Elena typed back: "Next Sunday. Pick me up at 8."

Then she deleted it.

Then she typed it again.

The cat settled beside her, watching the fountain, two creatures who'd forgotten how to be wild but weren't quite tame yet. Below, the city hummed its endless song of getting and spending, all those people running toward things they might not even want.

For the first time in a decade, Elena picked up the phone and called her mother.

"Mom?" she said when the line connected. "Remember that summer I played third base? I think I want to start again."

The water kept falling, arcs of light breaking against darkness. Some things, you learned, were worth doing badly. Some things were worth doing simply because you needed to remember how to feel something besides achievement.

Beside her, the cat purred.