The Orange Sunset

The notification lit up his iphone like a tiny accusation—her name, again—while we sat in section 214, the baseball game stretching into its seventh inning. The bear mascot danced on the dugout, oblivious to marriages crumbling around him.

I'd become something grotesque, a spy in my own life, tracking his movements, memorizing passwords, reading texts that burned into my retinas. Three months of careful surveillance, piecing together the affair like some forensic accountant of betrayal.

"You want another beer?" he asked, standing up. His phone sat on the armrest between us.

"No." The word came out flat, hard.

He paused. "Everything okay?"

"When were you going to tell me?"

The crowd roared around us. Someone hit a home run. The bear mascot high-fived fans. He sat down slowly, the color draining from his face.

"Tell you what?"

"About her. About the apartment in Wicker Park. About the fact that you've been sleeping with my sister for three months."

His mouth opened. Closed. The iphone between us pulsed with another message from her.

Outside the stadium, the sun had begun its descent—violent oranges and reds bleeding across the sky, the kind of sunset that makes you believe in divine violence, in cosmic punishment.

"I can explain," he started.

"No," I said, standing up. "You can't."

I walked out alone, leaving him with his iphone and his secrets and the baseball game that no longer mattered. The orange sky followed me all the way home, a beautiful wound I couldn't stop looking at.