Drought Season

The baseball game dragged into the seventh inning, the humid Georgia air thick enough to chew. Elena sat beside Mark on the aluminum bleachers, their marriage dissolving into the same oppressive silence that had settled over their apartment three months ago.

She reached for her bottle of water, condensation slick against her palm. The plastic crinkled in the quiet space between them. Mark didn't look up from his phone, thumbs scrolling through emails, jaw set in that familiar way that made her wonder if he was biting back words or just indifferent.

"You going to eat that?" Mark asked suddenly, nodding at the pathetic cardboard container of stadium spinach dip she'd bought out of habit, nostalgia for their first date here eight years ago.

"Not hungry." She pushed it toward him. The dip was cold now, the spinach congealed into a dark green mass that reminded her of pond scum, of things that had once been fresh and now just sat there, untouched.

The pitcher on the mound wound up, threw a ball that the batter sent soaring into the outfield. The crowd erupted. Mark finally looked at her, really looked at her, and she saw it then — the same exhaustion she felt reflected in his eyes, the same drowning sensation.

"I met someone," he said, so quietly she almost missed it beneath the cheering.

Elena's stomach twisted, but strangely, she felt relief instead of pain. Like surfacing after holding her breath too long underwater.

"I know," she said. "I met someone too."

The scoreboard clock ticked on. Below them, the umpire called time. Around them, thousands of people cheered, drank, lived. And somewhere in that stadium, surrounded by the crack of bats and the smell of stale popcorn, their marriage officially ended — not with fireworks or tears, but with cold spinach dip and the honest recognition that sometimes love just dries up, like a garden someone forgot to water.