The Seventh Inning

The orange glow of sunset hit the hospital window just as Sarah walked in. She'd been running — literally running — from the parking garage, her heels clicking frantically against the linoleum. Breathless, she found David sitting up in bed, the remote control loosely gripped in his good hand. A baseball game flickered on the television, mute.

"You came," he said, and something in his voice — surprise, relief, maybe something else — made her chest tighten.

"Of course I came. You texted me 'emergency,' David. I've known you since we were seven. You're my oldest friend."

He gestured to the screen with his chin. "Mariners are down by three. Bottom of the seventh. Remember when we skipped that graduation party to watch them clinch the division?"

Sarah pulled a chair closer to the bed. She did remember. They'd sat on his parents' roof, drinking cheap beer she'd stolen from her brother's stash, screaming at the sky when the final out was recorded. That was the night she'd realized she was in love with him. That was the night she'd decided to never tell him.

"The surgery went well," she said instead. "Your sister texted me."

"Yeah. They got it all. But I keep thinking about that night on the roof, you know? How young we were. How we thought we had forever."

The orange light deepened to amber, then purple. A nurse entered, checked his vitals, left. Neither of them spoke. The baseball game ended, the Mariners losing. David clicked off the television.

"There's something I need to say," he said. "Before — I mean, the scare made me realize. I don't want to keep running from this. From us."

Sarah's heart hammered. She'd imagined this moment a thousand times. But she'd played it safe for twenty years, buried it under friendships and relationships and the comfortable rhythm of being his best friend, never anything more.

"David," she started.

"No, let me finish. I married Claire because it was easy. Because I thought that's what you do. But every baseball game, every crisis, every time I needed someone — I called you. I always called you."

He reached for her hand with his good one, his palm warm and calloused. "I'm done running. I want to be with you, Sarah. Not as friends. As everything."

She squeezed his hand, tears spilling over. The sunset had faded to gray, but in the dim hospital room, something finally illuminated between them, something that had waited twenty years to be named.

"Okay," she whispered. "Let's not run anymore."