The Ninth Inning of Who We Were

The vitamin D supplement sat on my desk like a tiny judgment. Marcus had left it there three months ago when he still cared whether my bones crumbled or my heart gave out. We were friends then, or something close enough that the distinction didn't matter. But corporate restructuring has a way of clarifying exactly who you are to people: either the one who keeps their job, or the one who doesn't.

I'd spent decades climbing to a position that now felt like a padded cell. Outside my window, the city moved without me. My cat, Binx, slept on my discarded tie — the only thing in this apartment that didn't taste like compromise.

Then came the baseball game.

Marcus texted. Two tickets behind home plate, his company's box, the kind of access that comes from being the guy who didn't get laid off. I almost deleted it. But something made me go — maybe nostalgia, maybe loneliness, maybe the desperate hope that the person who'd left vitamins on my desk still existed somewhere beneath the tailored suit.

We met at the gate. He looked good. Success becomes some people.

"You haven't been taking them," he said, nodding at the vitamin I'd brought with me, a ridiculous peace offering clutched in my palm like a childhood keepsake.

"No," I said. "But I kept them."

The game unfolded like something we were supposed to care about. Ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded. The crowd roared. Marcus checked his phone, then caught me watching him.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. That was almost worse.

He'd made his choice. I'd made mine. We were just watching baseball because that's what friends do when they've run out of things to say.

The cat was waiting when I got home. The vitamins went in the trash. Some things you don't keep trying to swallow just because someone once thought you needed them.