The Last Inning

Mara sat on the orange crate they'd salvaged from behind the bodega three years ago, watching the cable guy coil the thick black cord like a snake digesting its prey. The apartment already echoed with emptiness, each footfall a accusation.

"You're really doing this," David said from the doorway. He still had his baseball cap on—the one she'd bought him opening day two seasons back. The brim shadowed eyes that used to look at her like she was sunrise. Now they just looked tired.

"Really doing this," she confirmed. Her palm pressed against the rough cardboard, feeling the imprint of years: wine rings from their first anniversary, coffee stains from the morning he'd lost his mother, the indelible mark of the cat they'd found dead on the highway last Thanksgiving. Barnaby had been his cat. She'd been the one to bury it.

"We could still—" he started, then stopped. They'd had this conversation twelve times in five days. The words were worn smooth.

The cable guy cleared his throat. "Ma'am, I need you to sign here."

She scrawled her name—her maiden name—across the termination form. Each letter felt like leaving something behind. Not just the apartment, but the version of herself who'd believed love was enough. Who'd thought that if she just tried harder, loved better, became smaller or larger or whatever he needed, they'd make it.

She'd been wrong.

"You kept the tickets," David said, noticing the baseball stubs she'd set aside to pack. Their last game. They'd lost. She'd pretended not to care about the score, just happy to be there with him. He'd spent three innings explaining why the manager's calls were all wrong. She'd nodded and smiled and thought: this is what compromise looks like.

It wasn't. It was disappearance by degrees.

"Take them," she said. "Or don't. I leave Thursday."

Thursday. Three days. The cat was already at her sister's. The orange crate would become recycling. The cable would be someone else's connection to a world of entertainment, of distraction, of anything-but-this.

The cable guy left. David stood in the apartment that was suddenly not theirs, never had been. His palm opened, closed. A gesture without purpose.

"I never thought you'd be the one to walk away," he said.

"Neither did I," she replied. "But I've been leaving for years. Today's just the first time I used the door."