Seventh Inning Stretch

The baseball stadium hummed with the collective tension of forty thousand people, but Elena only felt the hollow ache between her ribs. David sat beside her, his baseball cap pulled low, his eyes fixed on the field as if the outcome of this game might somehow fix the unspoken things breaking between them.

She reached into the bag of spinach and artichoke dip they'd bought from a vendor, her fingers brushing against his. He didn't pull away, but he didn't lean into the touch either. That was the problem lately — the absence of recoil mistaken for presence.

"You've got something..." David gestured vaguely at his own mouth, then returned his attention to the batter.

Elena wiped at her lips with a napkin, her hand trembling slightly. She'd stopped wearing her hair down the way he used to bury his face in it. Now she pulled it back tight, practical and severe, like everything else in their life since the promotion, since the miscarriage they never discussed, since the silence had become a third person in their marriage.

Their cat, Barnaby, had sensed it first — the shrinking warm spaces where they used to curl together on the couch. Now the cat spent evenings walking between them, plaintive and confused, as if trying to herd two drifting continents back together.

The crowd roared. Someone hit a home run. David stood and cheered, his hat nearly flying off. Elena watched his mouth form words she couldn't hear, saw the genuine joy transform his face, and realized with terrible clarity that she didn't know what made him happy anymore. Or if she ever really had.

"I'm leaving," she said when he sat back down. The words hung between them, small and enormous.

David turned to her slowly, and for the first time in months, he really looked at her. He saw the spinach dip forgotten between them, the way her hands gripped the empty seat in front of her, the terrified determination in her eyes.

"I know," he said, and removed his hat, running a hand through hair that had started going gray at the temples. "I've been waiting for you to say it."

Below them, the seventh inning stretch began. The crowd sang together, a unified voice rising into the summer dusk, while somewhere behind them, a stranger's cat called out from the parking lot, lonely and persistent, like something that refused to be ignored any longer.