Extra Innings

The baseball stadium lights hummed overhead, that electric buzz that always made me think of hospital corridors. Sarah had loved this seat—Section 214, Row 12, exactly where the foul pole sliced the sky. Three years since the divorce, and I still had season tickets. That's what the therapist called 'living in the past.' What she called 'unable to move on.'

I dry-swallowed another vitamin D supplement—the kind that comes in those optimism-orange bottles promising bone health and mood improvement. Sarah used to leave them on my nightstand with notes: *'For the man who never sees the sun.'* She wasn't wrong. I'd spent twenty years in corporate law offices, their windows designed to make you forget weather existed.

The batter connected. The crowd roared. I checked my phone—nothing from Elena. She'd stopped responding after I mentioned I'd been thinking about Sarah. It was the same pattern: the moment vulnerability crept in, I'd try to manufacture it with someone else. A substitute intimacy. Like taking vitamins instead of actually going outside.

I looked at my palm, tracing the life line that Sarah had once pretended to read during a beach vacation in Mexico. *'You're going to live a long, complicated life,'* she'd said, pressing her thumb into my hand. She wasn't a psychic, but she was right about the complicated part. The long part, well—that remained to be seen.

The baseball arced toward the left field seats. A collective gasp, then groans as it curved foul. So close. That's what Sarah used to say about us—that we were always one decision away from being something else. One different job, one honest conversation, one less night working late.

I stood up, leaving before the bottom of the ninth. The vitamins rattled in my pocket as I walked toward the exit, past couples sharing popcorn and families creating the kind of memories I'd somehow failed to make. Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I'd call Elena and say something real. Tomorrow I'd cancel the season tickets. Tomorrow I'd actually go outside instead of popping optimism from a bottle.

But that was the thing about tomorrows—they were just extra innings you kept promising yourself you'd play differently.