The Inning We Never Played

Emma watches me through the crack in the bathroom door, her reflection caught in the mirror while I pretend not to notice. I've become a spy in my own marriage, cataloging the small betrayals: the way she counts her vitamins each morning with the precision of a pharmacist—B-complex, D3, magnesium—arranging them in neat rows before swallowing them dry. The ritual used to be ours. Now it's hers alone.

The baseball championship plays on television in the other room, the crowd roar muffled through walls that feel thinner every day. We met at a game twelve years ago. Seventh inning stretch, she spilled her water on my shoes, laughing as she blotted my sneakers with a napkin. That woman—the one who found joy in chaos, who kissed me under the stadium lights while strangers cheered—has dissolved like sugar in this long drought.

"Are you coming to bed?" she calls.

"Soon."

I open the medicine cabinet and stare at the rows of supplements, each bottle promising something: better sleep, clearer skin, more energy. The vitamins that were supposed to fix us, to make us healthier, stronger, the couple who would age gracefully together. Instead they've become evidence of our separate evolutions. Her striving toward some version of perfection, me stagnating in the bathroom with a toothbrush and a lie I can't swallow.

The water runs from the faucet as I lean over the sink, letting it pour over my hands. I remember standing at this sink three months ago, my phone vibrating with her text—"We need to talk"—while I ran the water so she wouldn't hear me crying. That's when I started watching her. Tracking her movements through the house like a suspect. Learning her patterns through the gaps in my own surveillance.

I turn off the water and the house falls silent. The baseball game has ended. The vitamins are arranged on the counter. Emma is in the bedroom, waiting.

Some games go into extra innings. Some just get called on account of darkness.