The Seventh Inning Stretch

The baseball stadium roared around us, but I felt like a zombie moving through someone else's life. Twenty years of marriage, and somehow we'd become strangers who shared a bed and a mortgage.

"You going to eat that?" Elena asked, pointing to my plate.

I looked down at the fruit cup I'd bought instead of a hot dog. **Orange** segments glistened under the stadium lights, beside chunks of **papaya** I'd chosen because they reminded me of our honeymoon in Maui—the last time I'd seen her truly happy, or maybe the last time I'd been paying enough attention to notice.

"Go ahead," I said.

She picked at the fruit with delicate fingers, and I watched the way the **water** condensation on the outside of her plastic cup made her skin glisten. We used to talk about everything. Now we talked about nothing. The kids were grown. The house was too quiet. And here we were, at a **baseball** game on a Tuesday night, trying to remember how to be us.

"Marcus—" she started, then stopped. The crowd erupted as someone hit a home run.

I felt something crack open in my chest. "I still love you," I said, the words rushing out like I'd been holding them underwater for too long. "I don't know who we are anymore, but I still love you."

Elena set down the fruit cup. Her eyes found mine, and for the first time in years, I saw her really seeing me. "I know," she said softly. "I'm scared too."

The zombie sensation lifted, just a little. We had work to do. Years of silence to unspool. But as the seventh inning stretch began and we stood together, her hand found mine, and I thought maybe—just maybe—we weren't dead yet.