The Seventh Inning

Running became my religion after the divorce. Every morning at 5 AM, I'd lace up and pound the pavement, as if speed could outrun the echo of Sarah's key turning in the lock she no longer used.

Three years later, I still sought the same remedy. My lab, Buster, panted beside me, his gray muzzle testimony to our shared miles. We'd become two old men chasing phantom pain.

I couldn't bear it anymore—the apartment where every corner held memory, the coffee shop where we'd meet, the baseball stadium where I'd proposed during the seventh-inning stretch. So I transferred, sold everything, and moved west.

The new place came with one condition: feeding the landlord's cat. A tortoiseshell named Wednesday who watched me with what I swear was judgment as I packed boxes.

"At least you're not pretending this is temporary," she seemed to say, tail flicking from the windowsill.

My first night, I turned on the television. Baseball—old habits, as they say. The announcer's voice filled the empty room, familiar and foreign all at once. I'd watched every game with Sarah. She'd tolerated it for me, though she preferred reading. Said the rhythm of the game soothed her.

Wednesday hopped onto my lap, purring. Buster sighed from his bed, resigned to second place.

"Neither of us are first anymore, are we?" I asked the cat.

Outside, a couple argued. Something about forgotten dishes, missed appointments. The mundane grievances that accumulate like sediment, eventually weighing down even the strongest love.

I turned up the volume. The count was full. The batter connected—home run. The crowd roared. For a moment, the room felt full.

Then silence returned, heavier than before.

I'd been running so long I'd forgotten what it felt like to be still. To bear witness to my own life instead of fleeing it.

Wednesday bit my hand. Not hard—just enough to remind me I was there, in that room, with her and Buster and the baseball game fading to commercial.

"Right," I said. "Here."

The running had brought me here. But staying—that would be the harder part.