The Salad Days Are Over

Margot stood in the fluorescent-lit breakroom, staring at her container of wilting spinach. At forty-two, she'd finally committed to the salads, the vitamin supplements, the relentless optimization of a body that seemed increasingly determined to betray her. Her hair — still thick, still the same chestnut shade as her twenties — was the only part of her that refused to acknowledge time's creeping advance.

"You going to the game tonight?" asked Julian, the new junior associate. Twenty-four, with the kind of unmarked confidence that made Margot simultaneously fond and violently tired. He held a baseball glove like it belonged in an office.

"Baseball? No. I have court documents to review." She smiled, the practiced expression that said: I like you, but I remember when you were in preschool.

"Your husband's pitching, right? The semi-pro league?"

Margot's fork paused halfway to her mouth. David had mentioned the semi-pro team three years ago, around the time he'd started leaving his baseball cards in boxes instead of framed on the wall. They hadn't discussed it since. The unspoken agreement of their marriage: some dreams you bury together.

"He hasn't played in years."

"Oh." Julian's face flushed. "I just saw him at the field yesterday. Looked pretty good for an old guy."

That evening, Margot drove to the diamond. She sat in the parking lot, watching through the chain-link fence as David wound up and threw. The motion was beautiful — the same grace that had made her fall for him two decades ago. He'd been a minor league prospect then, before the shoulder injury, before law school, before the life they'd built on the sacrifices they never spoke of.

She thought about the spinach rotting in her office fridge. The vitamin D pills on her nightstand. All the ways she tried to outrun entropy.

David saw her car and waved. Not with surprise — with recognition. Like he'd been waiting.

Margot realized then that she didn't want the salads or the carefully preserved hair or the denial of middle age. She wanted the things they'd given up, the versions of themselves they'd shelved. Some marriages survive by burying dreams. Others survive by digging them up.

She got out of the car and walked toward the field as he threw another perfect strike.