Seventh Inning Palm

The palm reader had told Sarah she'd leave by autumn. I'd laughed, bought her cotton candy, kissed the salt off her lips. Three weeks later, she was gone.

Now I sat behind home plate, section 114, row 12, watching the Padres lose like my marriage—slowly, painfully, with bad calls and worse pitching. The water in my plastic cup had gone warm hours ago. I swirled it anyway, watching the condensation weep down the sides like I couldn't anymore.

"You okay, man?" The guy next to me offered. Probably noticed I hadn't touched my beer since the fourth inning. Or that I kept checking my phone for messages that wouldn't come.

"Fine," I said. "Just thinking about spinach."

He looked at me like I'd announced I was the mascot. The truth was, Sarah had left her frozen spinach in the freezer when she moved out. Every time I opened it, there it was—her healthy habits, her planning, her absence crystallized into blocks of dark green nutrients she'd never eat and I couldn't throw away.

The palm reading had been her idea. This quirky little shop in Old Town, incense and tapestries and a woman with eyes like cracked marbles. She'd traced the lines on my hand—my life line, my heart line, my fate line—and told me nothing I wanted to hear. You'll lose her, she'd said. Some things are written before we're born.

I'd chosen not to believe it. Choice matters, I'd told Sarah later that night. We write our own stories.

She'd kissed me then, but her palm had felt cold in mine. Maybe she'd already known.

The Padres' third baseman threw a wild pitch. The ball sailed toward the backstop while a runner scored from third. The crowd groaned. I finished my warm water, standing as the announcer called for the seventh-inning stretch.

My phone buzzed. Not Sarah. Just my boss asking about Monday's meeting. I slipped it back in my pocket.

The palm reader had been wrong about one thing. She'd said I'd find someone else, someone better, someone whose fate line intertwined with mine. She'd traced my marriage line fading into nothing, then shown me where new lines would eventually branch out like creeks finding new paths.

I hadn't believed her about Sarah leaving. I sure as hell didn't believe her about the rest.

But as I sat back down, watching the pitcher wipe sweat from his brow, checking my phone one more time for nothing, I thought about that spinach in my freezer. Thought about warm water and cold palms and how some futures arrive whether we believe in them or not.

The Padres were down by four runs. Bottom of the seventh. Three more innings before this ended, one way or another.

I stayed anyway.