The Art of Losing

The orange sunset bled into her office window, casting everything in a bruised light—appropriate, really, considering the day she'd had. Sarah stared at the organizational pyramid on her whiteboard, Tom's name conspicuously absent from the tier he'd occupied for seven years. His desk had been cleared by noon, the efficiency almost admnistratively cruel.

"He didn't see it coming," Maya said from the doorway, holding two containers of takeout. "Bull in a china shop, that one. Thought he could call the CEO's vision 'delusional' in the all-hands and keep his corner office."

Sarah accepted the spinach curry without appetite. "He was right about the metrics."

"Being right and keeping your job are different skill sets." Maya perched on the edge of her desk. "Remember when we played that corporate softball game last summer? Tom swinging for the fences every time, striking out, while you kept getting on base with bunts and grounders? Baseball rewards patience. Corporate baseball rewards something else entirely."

The corporate softball tournament—she'd forgotten until now. Tom had played left field, spent the game bragging about his high school glory days, then dropped a routine fly ball that cost them the championship. She'd been relieved when he struck out in the bottom of the ninth, two runners on, game on the line. Some part of her had known then.

"I should have spoken up in the meeting," she said.

"And joined him in unemployment?" Maya's voice was gentler now. "You have a mortgage. So does he."

Sarah's phone litened—her husband, asking about dinner. She swiped it away. The truth was, she and Tom had been something more than colleagues for six months. Nothing explicit, nothing consummated, but those late nights working through the quarterly projections, the way his hand had lingered on her shoulder passing behind her chair, the coffee shop meetings that technically weren't meetings. She'd been playing her own game of corporate baseball, bunting her way through, while he'd swung for everything and lost.

Now he was gone, and she was still here, keeping her head down, getting on base. The orange light had faded to gray. She should go home. She should eat her spinach curry. She should text her husband back.

Instead, she opened her email and drafted a message to Tom. Not I love you—she wasn't ready for that, might never be ready. But: "I know what you tried to do. I was right there with you."

She hit send, closed her laptop, and finally took a bite of cold curry. Some games you play to win. Some you play just to prove you're still in the game.