The Last Inning

The air conditioning hummed against the mid-July heat, but Elena's palms still sweat against her wine glass. Another leaving party—her third this year. The tech sector's churn feasted on friendships like a starving animal, and she was beginning to recognize the hollow ache in her chest as something between resignation and grief.

On the television, a baseball game played without sound. The Yankees were down by three in the eighth, but Mark—who was moving to Seattle on Tuesday—kept glancing at the score, his phone face-up on the coffee table like an accusation. Someone's iPhone buzzed with a text, and Elena watched five people simultaneously reach for their pockets, then laugh when they realized it wasn't theirs.

"You ever feel like we're all just waiting for something?" Elena asked, not looking at him. She'd had too much wine. She always did at these things.

Mark traced the condensation on his beer bottle. "I talked to my brother yesterday. He's still working the same cable installation job in Buffalo. Twenty years, same routes. Said he saw my first girlfriend's house last week—she's married with three kids now."

The silence stretched thin between them, heavy with everything they'd never said. Four years of shared lunches and inside jokes and lingering glances that neither had the courage to name. The baseball game switched to commercial. Someone's dog—Marcus's girlfriend's husky—padded into the room and dropped a tennis ball at Elena's feet.

"Bear," she said softly, startled. That was the dog's name. It felt like a terrible joke. "I don't think I can bear another one of these farewells."

Mark finally looked at her, really looked at her, and for a moment Elena imagined she saw everything mirrored in his eyes. The same recognition. The same regret. But then his phone lit up with a notification, and he reached for it, and the moment dissolved like sugar in warm rain.

"Seattle," he said, reading whatever message had come through. "They want me to start a week early."

Elena finished her wine and set the glass down. "That's great," she heard herself say. "Really."

Outside, the summer dark pressed against the windows, and somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. It was the bottom of the ninth. The Yankees had runners on second and third with two outs. Elena thought about how every game ended eventually, but only one team got to celebrate. The rest just had to bear it.

She'd wake up tomorrow with a headache and delete his number. Some things, she'd learned, didn't need to be said aloud to be understood.