The Ninth Inning of Us

The baseball cap pulled low over my eyes, shielding me from the harsh afternoon sun and, more importantly, from the pitying looks of the couples surrounding us. Sarah sat three seats away, her iPhone glowing in her lap as she typed something that made her smile—a smile I hadn't seen in months.

I swallowed another vitamin with warm beer, the pill caught in my throat like everything else I couldn't say to her anymore. The scoreboard flashed the bottom of the eighth, our marriage tied and going into extra innings neither of us wanted to play.

"You're like a zombie," she'd told me that morning, her voice tired rather than angry. "Just going through the motions. I can't remember the last time you were actually present."

She wasn't wrong. I'd been moving through our life on autopilot, numbing myself against the gradual erosion of us—the small disappointments, the unsaid words, the way we'd stopped reaching for each other in the night. Better to feel nothing than to acknowledge that we were slowly, inevitably losing.

The crack of the bat startled me. A home run sailed into the bleachers, and the crowd erupted. In the chaos, our hands brushed as we both reached for the same discarded wrapper. The electric contact made me flinch. Sarah's eyes met mine, and for a heartbeat, I saw everything we'd been: the wedding on her parents' lawn, the midnight dances in our kitchen, the way she'd looked at me like I was her whole world.

Then she pulled away and turned back to her phone.

The baseball game continued, but I'd already lost. The vitamins weren't working. The hat couldn't hide the exhaustion in my soul. And no matter how many innings stretched ahead, some games end long before the final out is called.