Rain Delay

The rain started in the seventh inning, a gray curtain that sent the baseball crowd scrambling for cover. Maya remained in her seat, the empty stadium around her suddenly feeling vast and intimate. Her iphone buzzed in her pocket — him again. Three years of silence, broken by a drunk text at a minor league game.

She pulled out the device, water dripping from the brim of her cap onto the screen. The message was simple: "Thinking about you."

Maya laughed, a hollow sound that the wind carried away. She remembered the last time she'd seen him, standing in her doorway in the pouring rain. His hair had been plastered to his forehead then, dark and desperate in that way that had once made her heart ache. Now the memory felt like a photograph she'd found in a stranger's drawer — familiar, yet utterly disconnected from her life.

On the field, the grounds crew rolled out the tarp, a massive orange sheet that swallowed the diamond. Maya had played baseball in college, shortstop with a glove that ate up everything hit her way. That's how she'd met him — at a tournament, sliding into second base, his cleat catching her ankle. A collision that left a scar and a phone number.

The iphone buzzed again. "Can we talk?"

Maya stood up, her jeans soaked through. She walked to the edge of the overhang where rain sliced through the air in sheets. Beyond the stadium lights, she could see the city glowing through the downpour, a grid of lives intersecting and diverging in infinite patterns.

She typed a response, then deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too.

The rain fell harder now, a roar that filled her ears. Maya remembered how he'd smelled like rain and cheap cologne, how he'd run his hands through his hair when he was nervous, how he'd promised her forever in a baseball stadium just like this one, under different stars.

She pocketed the phone without sending anything. Some games get called on account of weather, and that's just how it goes. You pack up your gear, you walk to your car in the rain, and you understand that sometimes the clearest thing you can do is let the field stay flooded until morning.