Electric Fourth Inning

The storm front moved in during the fourth inning, darkening the sky above the stadium. Ellie watched the first bolt of lightning crack open the horizon, a brilliant white fracture that mirrored everything she'd been holding back for months.

'You're not taking your vitamins again, are you?' David asked, not taking his eyes off the field. The Brewers were down by three, and he'd spent the past hour dissecting every pitching decision like his life depended on it.

Ellie turned the small orange bottle in her palm. The prescription had run out three weeks ago. She'd stopped refilling it around the same time she stopped trying to fix what was breaking between them. 'They didn't help anyway.'

David laughed, that tight sound she'd grown to hate. 'Everything helps if you give it a chance. You just quit things too easily. Like you quit grad school. Like you—'

'Like I quit believing we were happy?' The words hung between them, suspended in the humid air.

Another lightning strike illuminated the parking lot beyond left field. Thunder rolled through the stadium, shaking the hollow plastic seats. Around them, other fans began gathering their things, but neither of them moved.

'This again?' David finally looked at her, his expression exhausted. 'We came here to have a nice time. Can't you just—be here? Be present?'

The baseball game had paused. Players scattered for the dugouts as the umpires signaled for the tarp. Ellie watched the crowd surge toward the exits, people pressing against each other in the rain, all of them moving somewhere together.

She stood up. 'I am present, David. I'm so present it hurts.' She dropped the vitamin bottle into his beer cup, where it sank past the floating pretzel crumbs. 'And I'm done quitting things I should have left a long time ago.'

The sky opened up as she walked up the aisle, rain washing through her shirt, through her skin, electric and cold. Behind her, David shouted something she couldn't hear over the thunder. She kept walking, toward the exit signs glowing green in the dark, toward the parking lot where her car waited, toward whatever came next.