Extra Innings

The baseball sat on the mantel for thirty-seven years, a signed souvenir from a game Ray and Elena attended on their second date. Now, with the divorce papers freshly notarized and the house in escrow, it was just another item to be divided. He let her have it. Some things you don't fight for.

Ray found himself at a bar called The Orange Peel that evening — an unfortunate name, but it was far from their neighborhood, far from the places where everyone knew them as the couple who'd made it twenty years before unraveling in six months. The bartender had orange hair, bright and artificial, and she poured him a double whiskey without asking.

"You look like a man who's seen better innings," she said.

He almost laughed. Elena had loved baseball. She'd explained the statistics to him once, early on, her voice animated in that way he'd fallen for. The way she'd gone quiet later, year by year, until their conversations were nothing but weather and grocery lists and whether to repair the roof. He'd stopped asking what she was thinking. She'd stopped telling him.

A cat jumped onto the empty stool beside him — a stray that wandered in from the alley, lean and battle-scarred. Ray ordered a saucer of milk. The cat lapped it with a desperate rhythm, purring violently, as if affection were a scarce resource it couldn't afford to turn down.

"That's Bandit," the bartender said. "Comes and goes. You can't own a thing like that. You just appreciate it when it shows up."

Ray watched the cat finish its milk, then push against his hand with a sandpaper tongue. Something tightened in his chest.

He'd thought love was something you caught, like a ball in the air — secure it in your glove and it's yours. But maybe it was more like this: moments that arrived unbidden, that you couldn't command or keep. Maybe the mistake was thinking possession was ever part of the arrangement.

The cat leaped down and disappeared into the night. Ray finished his drink, left a large tip, and walked home through streets he'd known for decades that looked suddenly unfamiliar. The house was dark. He sat on the porch steps and listened to the neighborhood settle, and for the first time in months, he didn't mind being alone.