Seventh Inning Split

The iPhone vibrated against the mahogany table, its screen lighting up with a notification that made Sarah's stomach drop. *Mark: I think we should talk.*

She looked across the restaurant at her husband of twelve years, currently peeling an orange with meticulous care. The citrus scent drifted toward her, incongruous in the dim, upscale bistro. David's fingers were stained with juice, his wedding ring catching the candlelight.

"Your mother's surgery went well," he said, not looking up. "She's asking for you."

Sarah stared at him. "What?"

"Your phone buzzed. Hospital calling, right?" He finally met her eyes, and she saw it—that familiar distance he'd been retreating behind for months. The same distance that had filled their bed with cold silence, their conversations with careful nothingness.

She unlocked her iPhone. Not the hospital. A message from Mark, David's best friend since college. The man who'd been at their wedding. The man who'd coached their son's baseball team last summer when David was "too busy" with work.

*She knows,* the message read. *About us. I'm sorry, Sarah. I can't do this anymore.*

The baseball metaphor struck her with cruel irony. She'd been standing at the plate for months, watching David throw curveball after curveball—late nights, vague business trips, the sudden password on his phone. She'd kept swinging, kept believing in the game they'd built together.

Now she realized she'd already struck out. She just hadn't heard the umpire call it.

"Sarah?" David's voice pulled her back. He'd arranged the orange segments into a perfect circle on his bread plate. Some compulsion, some need for order in his chaos.

She thought about their son, currently at a sleepover, probably playing catch with his friends. About the basement full of baseball equipment they'd accumulated over the years. About how David had stopped going to games, stopped caring, stopped being present in anything that resembled their life together.

"Your phone," David prompted, gesturing with juice-sticky fingers.

Sarah stood up. She picked up her iPhone, felt its smooth, familiar weight. A device that had become her confidant, her connection to the world when her marriage had become a series of unanswered texts and missed calls.

"It wasn't the hospital," she said, her voice steady. "It was Mark. He says he's done waiting for you to leave me."

The orange segments sat exposed on David's plate, vulnerable and bright in the flickering candlelight. His face went through something complicated—shock, fear, then a strange kind of relief.

"Sarah, I—"

"Save it." She walked toward the door, iPhone gripped tight in her hand. Behind her, she could hear him begin to speak, could picture the excuse forming on his lips. Some pitch he'd practiced in his head, some way to spin this so he'd be the victim.

She pushed through the restaurant doors and into the cool night air. Her iPhone buzzed again in her hand—Mark, calling this time. She declined the call.

Some games, you didn't get to play extra innings. Sometimes you just had to walk off the field.