Extra Innings

The orange peel stuck to my fingers, sticky and sweet, as I watched Mark's son circle the bases. Third inning. The boy had his father's swing—that quick, violent snap of the wrists that had made Mark a legend in our corporate softball league twenty years ago.

"He's good," said the woman beside me. She was maybe forty, with a runner's body and eyes that had seen too many Friday nights alone. "That your grandson?"

"Nephew," I lied.

The truth was more complicated. Mark was dying—pancreatic cancer, the kind that moves fast and leaves no room for goodbyes. His wife had called me yesterday, her voice cracking in ways it never had during our three-year affair. She needed someone to collect his things from the office. Someone discrete.

I'd found the baseball in his desk drawer. A minor league ball, worn and scuffed, with an inscription I couldn't quite make out. Beside it, a photograph of Mark with a dog I'd never known he'd owned.

The boy scored. The small crowd cheered.

"You want the rest?" I offered her the orange. "I'm not hungry."

She took it, her fingers brushing mine. "Thanks. My ex used to bring these to every game. Said they were luckier than peanuts."

"Baseball superstitions."

"Everything's superstition when you're desperate enough." She peeled a segment and popped it into her mouth. "You come here often?"

"First time."

"Me too." She nodded toward the boy. "My son plays for the other team. His dad's supposed to be here. Got called into work instead."

The pitch flew high. Ball four. The boy trotted to first.

"Work," I said. "Always work."

"Yeah. You in corporate?"

"Used to be."

She laughed, short and bitter. "Let me guess. You and Mark go back?"

My stomach dropped. "How did you—"

"The way you watch his son. Like you're trying to find him in the boy's face." She finished the orange, wiped her hands on her jeans. "Mark told me about you. Once."

The world tilted.

"He told you—"

"That you were the best friend he ever made the worst mistake of losing." She stood up. "I'm Lisa, by the way. The ex-wife."

I stared at her.

"Mark asked me to give you something," she continued, digging into her purse. "If I ever saw you at one of Tommy's games. Said you'd understand."

She pressed something into my palm. A dog-eared business card from 1998. Mine. On the back, in Mark's handwriting: *Some games go into extra innings. That's when the real players show up.*

The boy hit a double. His father watched from a hospital bed fifty miles away, and the woman who'd divorced him five years ago sat beside me, and I held the evidence that he'd never stopped loving me across twenty years of silence.

"He's got two months," Lisa said softly. "Maybe three."

"I know."

"Are you going to see him?"

I looked at the baseball card, at the boy who looked like his father, at the empty orange rind in my lap.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm still deciding which innings matter."