The Art of Keeping Score

The fox-red hair spilled across his pillow like a warning I'd ignored too long. Three years of friendship, two years of something more, and now I was watching him sleep, calculating how many bases I'd rounded before sliding home into a trap of my own making.

His dog, a loyal golden retriever named Buster, slept at the foot of the bed. The animal had greeted me with tail wags and desperate enthusiasm last night, as if I were still just his best friend's girlfriend, not the woman who'd spent the past six months secretly sleeping with him while my own husband worked late shifts at the hospital.

I slipped out from under the sheets, padding to the kitchen in my bare feet. The spinach salad from our dinner sat wilted on the counter, its green leaves now black and slimy—much like us, really. We'd seemed so fresh and necessary at first, a burst of color in gray lives. Now we were just decaying quietly in the refrigerator of someone else's home.

Mark appeared in the doorway, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair. 'You're leaving.' Not a question.

'Dave is expecting me for breakfast,' I said, though we both knew he wasn't. Dave had stopped expecting anything from me months ago.

'My baseball coach used to say,' Mark leaned against the doorframe, 'that the worst strikeouts aren't the ones where you swing and miss. It's the ones where you watch the pitch go right by because you're too afraid to move.' He paused. 'I'm not afraid anymore.'

The words hung between us like a choice I'd been avoiding. I could stay and destroy three lives, or leave and preserve the comfortable lie that had sustained us for years. A true friend would have walked away immediately. A good woman would have never started this.

'Your dog,' I said, gesturing toward the bedroom. 'He still thinks I'm just your friend.'

Mark's laugh was bitter. 'Buster knows exactly what you are. He just doesn't judge.'

I gathered my things with trembling hands. Some betrayals happen in explosive moments, but ours had been a slow accumulation—theft in installments, each base stolen while no one was watching. Now the game was over, and the only thing left was to tally the damage.