The Seventh Inning Stretch

The stadium lights hummed above us, artificial suns illuminating the patchy **hair** on Mark's temples as he checked his **iPhone** for the third time in five minutes. Another text from 'Sarah' - just Sarah, no last name, as if that made it anything other than what it was.

I'd bought these **baseball** tickets three months ago, back when I thought we could fix this. Back when I believed that if we just did the things normal couples did - date nights, weekend getaways, postseason games - we'd somehow remember how to love each other again. The foolish optimism of the drowning.

"Aaron's pitching," I said, trying. "Remember when we saw him rookie year?"

"Yeah," Mark said, pocketing his phone with a movement too quick to be casual. "Great game." He didn't remember. We hadn't gone together. I'd gone with my father, the year before the cancer took him. Mark had been at some conference, something about scaling or synergies or whatever paid for the rings on both our fingers.

The crowd roared. Someone hit a home run.

I excused myself to the restroom, walked past the vendor selling **baseball** caps and foam fingers, found myself standing in the concourse watching the game through a glass wall. The players moved like ants from this distance, their perfectly orchestrated violence meaningless and beautiful.

I should go back. I should sit beside him and pretend not to notice how his phone lit up in his pocket like a dying star, bright and demanding. I should **bear** it - the dinners, the silences, the little murders that happen in slow motion across years instead of all at once.

My father had loved this game. Its rules, its rituals, the way failure was built into the system: even the best batters fail seven times out of ten. Maybe that was the lesson. Maybe some things just don't work out, and the grace is in knowing when to walk away.

I turned toward the exit instead.

Let him explain the tickets. Let him tell Sarah about the breakup in a text message, small words on a small screen. Let the game continue without me.

Outside, the air felt like something I could finally breathe again.