The Fourth Inning of Grief

Marcus hadn't felt like himself since the funeral. He moved through his days like a zombie—automatic, hollowed out, performing the motions of living without anyone home behind his eyes. His coworkers at the insurance agency had stopped asking if he was okay. They'd moved past sympathy into that comfortable workplace indifference where everyone pretends not to notice when someone is slowly falling apart.

It was Elena who noticed him crying in his car during lunch. He'd gone to the river to eat his sandwich alone, watching the current, thinking about how his father had loved swimming here as a boy. Elena tapped on his window—her hair wet from the rain, dark curls plastered to her cheeks like she'd been crying too.

"You're missing the game," she said.

"What game?"

"The office softball game. Remember? We're playing the actuaries." She paused. "My dad played baseball. Minor leagues, briefly. He used to take me to games." She didn't say her dad was gone too, but she didn't have to.

"I haven't played since I was twelve," Marcus said.

"Neither have I. But there's a spot on the roster, and you're going to fill it."

He almost said no. But something in her eyes—something that recognized his particular flavor of grief—made him nod instead.

They stood in the outfield together, both terrible at the sport, missing balls and laughing helplessly under a sky that refused to rain properly. In the fourth inning, a line drive came sailing toward them. Marcus lunged for it, and Elena did too, and they collided, tumbling onto the grass in a tangle of limbs and laughter that felt almost like joy.

"I think I'm alive," Marcus said, staring up at the clouds.

"Me too," Elena replied. Her hair had come loose from its ponytail, and without thinking, he reached out and tucked a strand behind her ear. The gesture was so intimate, so suddenly tender, that they both froze.

They didn't kiss. They didn't have to. They lay there on the field as the game continued around them, two people who'd forgotten how to be human, remembering something essential about being alive.