The Seventh Inning

Sarah's gray hair fell across her eyes as she watched him from across the bar—David, with his baseball cap pulled low, nursing a water like it might save him. She remembered how his hair used to curl behind his ears, how she'd run her fingers through it while they watched games from their apartment balcony, back when the Cardinals were something they shared instead of something that divided them.

The vitamin regimen had been his idea, of course. Always the pragmatist. Take your D3, he'd say, like it was a prayer. Now she swallowed them alone, each pill a tiny monument to all the things she couldn't fix with optimism.

"Playing the long game," he'd called it, their marriage. But somewhere around year seven, it had started feeling less like strategy and more like—what was that corporate term he'd brought home?—a pyramid scheme. New investments at the base (dates, adventures, sex) supporting the few at the top (mortgage arguments, fertility clinics, whose turn it was to call his mother).

She'd stopped coming to their baseball seats three months ago. Tonight, seeing him here with someone else—the copper-haired woman with laugh lines and terrible taste in beer—felt less like betrayal and more like watching someone else wear your favorite coat. It fit her better anyway.

David caught her eye. A moment of recognition, then he raised his water glass in a toast she hadn't earned.

Sarah ordered another drink. The baseball game droned on, but for the first time in years, she couldn't remember the score.