The Lightning We Missed

The baseball game flickered on the bar television—bottom of the ninth, two outs, runner on second. I wasn't watching. I was watching her.

Sarah sat three stools down, tracing condensation on her glass, her golden retriever—a therapy dog, I'd learn—lying quietly at her feet. We'd been colleagues for three years, dancing around each other through staff meetings and coffee breaks, both too married to our work, both too afraid of what might happen if we stopped running.

"You ever notice," she said, apropos of nothing, "how baseball is just waiting? For something to happen. For lightning to strike."

Lightning. The word hung between us. Outside, thunder rattled the windows. A stray cat, the bar's mascot, wound around Sarah's ankles, purring like a small engine.

"My wife left me," I heard myself say. "Two months ago. I come here every night because the silence at home—it's too loud."

She turned. Really looked at me. "My husband died," she said. "Fourteen months tomorrow. The dog—his name is Baseball, by the way—was his service animal. Now he's mine."

The pitcher wound back. The crowd on television roared. And in that moment, something shifted—like lightning behind clouds, illuminating everything we'd been too scared to see.

"I'm not running anymore," I said.

She smiled, uncertain and brave. "Me neither."

The cat jumped onto her lap. Baseball lifted his head and thumped his tail. And somewhere in the distance, over the static of the bar radio, a baseball game ended, but ours—ours was just beginning.