The Eighth Inning Text

I'd been running from it for weeks—the conversation I needed to have with Maya about why I'd been ghosting her since homecoming. But now, at the bottom of the eighth inning of my brother's baseball game, I was finally ready to stop running.

She was sitting three rows down in the stands, wearing that oversized hoodie she always stole from her older sister. My phone burned in my pocket where I'd typed and deleted seventeen different versions of the truth.

Then came the crack of the bat—a foul ball arcing toward the bleachers. People scrambled. Maya jumped up to move, and her phone slipped from her pocket, bouncing down the concrete steps.

I was already running.

I didn't think. I just moved, vaulting over rows while everyone else flinched away. The ball kept rolling, but I didn't care about that. I slid in beside Maya just as she reached for her iPhone, which had landed screen-down near the aisle.

"You okay?" I asked, chest heaping like I'd just sprinted miles instead of rows.

She looked up, confused. "Yeah, just—" Then she saw me. Really saw me. "Leo?"

Her phone buzzed against the concrete. From my pocket, I felt my own iPhone vibrate in response. She must have sent something while I was running toward her.

I handed her phone back. Our fingers brushed. Everything I'd been running from suddenly seemed ridiculous.

"I've been meaning to talk to you," I said, loud enough to be heard over the crowd but quiet enough that it felt like a secret. "About everything."

The baseball game continued behind us—cheers, the thwack of bat meeting ball, the announcer's voice—but in that moment, it was just background noise to something real.

Maya's phone lit up with a message from me: *I'm sorry I was scared.*

She read it. Then she looked at me, really looked at me, and smiled.

"You're an idiot," she said. "But you're here now."

I sat down beside her and finally stopped running.