Deep End

Marcus stood at the edge of his sister's pool, nursing a warm beer and watching the children play an improvised game of baseball in the yard. The plastic bat connected with the ball—a hollow crack that echoed differently than the wooden bats he'd swung twenty years ago, before the shoulder injury, before the scholarship evaporated like morning dew.

His nephew tagged second base, triumphant. Marcus felt the old ghost twitch in his rotator cuff.

"You gonna eat that spinach salad, or just stare at it?" Sheila appeared beside him, two decades removed from the girl who'd sat in his bleachers. She looked tired in that particular way married women with corporate jobs did—good at hiding it, but not from him. Not anymore.

"Not hungry." He set the beer down. "I'm thinking about taking that logistics job."

"The one in Ohio?" She splashed water onto the deck. "You'd hate it. You'd hate yourself within six months."

"I'm forty-two, Sheila. I've been 'between opportunities' for eight months. The pool of candidates is getting deeper every time I look."

"Then change the pool." She dove cleanly into the water, slicing through the surface while Marcus watched the spinach leaves wilt on his paper plate. The kids shouted someone was safe, someone was out, the game continuing without him, always without him now.

She surfaced, slicking back wet hair. "Remember when you told me baseball wasn't a game? It was about who got to keep playing and who had to watch."

"I was eighteen. I thought I was profound."

"You were right." She treaded water in the deep end. "But you forgot the most important part. The ones watching get to decide when to walk away."

The spinach salad sat untouched. The baseball game wound down as mothers called children inside. Marcus looked at the job offer folded in his pocket—safe, sensible, suffocating—and at his sister treading water in the gathering twilight, waiting to see if he would choose to sink or swim.