The Color of Leaving

The baseball game was tied, bottom of the ninth, but Sarah couldn't have cared less. She sat surrounded by cheering fans, her body present but her mind elsewhere—floating above the stadium, watching herself pretend to be a person who enjoyed things. A zombie in a Padres jersey, going through the motions of a life she'd stopped living months ago.

Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket. Again. David's third text in twenty minutes. You okay? You've been weird lately. Are we good?

They'd been together four years. That was a long time to be wrong about something.

She'd been packing lunches every morning—sandwiches with spinach, always spinach, because David said they needed to eat better, needed to be healthier, needed to try. Everything was trying with him. Trying to be happier. Trying to love him the way he deserved. Trying to want children and a house in the suburbs and Sunday mornings at farmers markets. Trying to want this baseball game, this life, this version of herself.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in impossible oranges and pinks. Beautiful. The kind of sunset that should make you feel something. She remembered feeling things once, vivid and overwhelming—love that made her hands shake, grief that felt like drowning, joy so sharp it hurt. Now everything was muffled, like she was experiencing her life through thick glass.

A home run. The crowd erupted. David jumped up, spilling beer, grinning at her with that hopeful, desperate look she'd come to dread. "Did you see that?"

She nodded. She hadn't.

Her phone lit up with a notification from a dating app she'd downloaded three days ago and hadn't had the courage to open. You have 3 new matches. One of them was someone she'd matched with in college, before David, before everything got so heavy and inevitable. Back when she still believed in chance.

The orange sky deepened toward purple. The baseball continued below. David took her hand, and she let him, feeling nothing at all. His palm was sweating. He'd shaved his hands this morning, a detail she noticed with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a specimen.

"Sarah?" His voice had that edge it got when he knew something was wrong but didn't want to say it.

She watched her phone screen go dark, her reflection appearing for a moment—a stranger's face, hollow-eyed and tired.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow I'll end it.

She'd been telling herself that for six months.