The Seventh Inning

The landlord said three days. Three days to clear out fifteen years of a life that had somehow unspooled without me noticing. I stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by boxes marked with masking tape and promises I'd forgotten I'd made. The baseball sat on the mantle—still dusty from that game at Fenway where David told me he loved me for the first time. The salt in the air, the eighth-inning stretch, the way his hand found mine in the crowd. Now the ball just sat there, a paperweight for memories I couldn't afford to keep carrying.

My phone buzzed on the counter. Another LinkedIn notification: David had been promoted to VP. The irony tasted like old pennies. I dropped the phone into the trash box without looking.

Mittens, David's cat, wound through my legs, purring like she knew something I didn't. She was the only thing he'd left behind—the one thing he hadn't wanted. 'Too much responsibility,' he'd said, the same week he told me he'd met someone else. Someone younger. Someone who didn't want children, who didn't ask questions, who fit neatly into the five-year plan he'd quietly abandoned me for.

I carried the first box to the moving truck, sweat already gathering at the small of my back despite the October chill. The neighbor's kid was playing baseball in the street, the crack of the bat echoing like something breaking. I watched the ball sail over rooftops, disappearing into someone else's story.

By dusk, I was down to the last box. I filled a glass of water from the kitchen tap, watching the dust motes dance in the dying light. This was it—the last drink in a place that had held everything and nothing at all. The water tasted like endings.

Mittens jumped into her carrier without a fight, as if she understood that some doors close so others can open. I locked the apartment door and slipped the key through the mail slot—final, irreversible, like a pitch you can't call back.

The truck engine turned over. Somewhere in the distance, baseball laughter carried on the evening air. I checked the rearview mirror. Mittens watched through the cage, calm and unbothered, already moving forward.

I shifted into drive and didn't look back again.