Lightning at Third Base

The cardboard pyramid sagged in the corner of my office, a monument to Maria's corporate restructuring scheme—three years of middle management rendered as papier-mâché. I hadn't thrown it out. Some things you keep.

'I almost didn't come,' Sarah said, standing in my doorway with that damn baseball cap pulled low. The friend zone meme made flesh, except we'd crossed that line so many times the boundaries had blurred into something unrecognizable. 'Got your message about the funeral.'

'Maria's mother asked if I'd speak.' I spun the pyramid on my desk. 'She thinks we were still together.'

Sarah stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The lightning flashed outside, sudden and violent, illuminating the dust motes dancing between us. 'We could tell her the truth. That you haven't been in love with anyone since—'

'Since you chose Mark?' I finished for her. 'Since you married him and moved to Seattle and sent me Christmas cards with photos of your golden retriever?'

Her hand trembled as she removed the baseball cap. Gray threads wove through her dark hair now. 'He left me. Two months ago.' The confession hung between us like smoke. 'I drove ten hours because the lightning looked like the night we—'

'—almost kissed in the parking lot after the game,' I remembered. 'Third base, bottom of the ninth. You said if I could predict the outcome, you'd leave with me.'

'Strikeout.' She touched the pyramid, leaving a fingerprint on its dusty surface. 'You were always calculating the odds.'

'The odds of you walking through that door were zero.' I stood, my chair scraping against the floor. 'But here you are.'

The storm cracked the sky open. Rain lashed against the windows like accusations. Maria's pyramid collapsed on my desk, cardboard giving way to gravity, and I didn't care. I crossed to where Sarah stood, the baseball cap in her hand, and realized some structures are meant to fall.

'The funeral,' she said, 'is it too late to—'

'To be my plus one?' I asked. 'Sarah, I've been waiting eight years for you to take off that hat.'

She smiled, and for the first time since she'd walked in, it reached her eyes. 'Then let's go. Before the lightning stops.'