The Seventh Inning Stretch

The baseball game droned on in the background—another season, another losing streak. David sat on the couch, his daughter's cat, Buster, curled beside him, purring with infuriating contentment. The apartment felt too large since Sarah left. Three months, and he still reached for his iPhone every morning, thumb hovering over her name in that familiar, pathetic dance of almost-calling.

"She's not coming back," his sister had told him, brutal as a slap. "You're being a bull about this, David. Charging at every red cape she waves."

He'd denied it, of course. But sitting here in the amber light of another lonely evening, he wondered if stubbornness had become his defining feature. The cat shifted, stretching, and David remembered the day they'd adopted him—the shelter had warned them about the name. "Buster? Like the crab?" Sarah had laughed. "No, like the myth." Whatever that meant.

His iPhone buzzed. Sarah. His heart hammered against his ribs like a runner stealing home.

"Hey," he said, voice rough.

"Hey yourself." Her pause stretched long enough to make his chest ache. "I'm at the baseball field. Where we had our first date."

The bull statue in left field. They'd taken that stupid selfie, his arms around her waist, both drunk on cheap beer and new love.

"Why?"

"Because I'm tired of being stubborn." She sounded tired. Good tired. The kind that comes before healing. "I drove by your place. Saw you in the window with the cat. Looked happy."

David looked at Buster, who was now grooming himself with serene indifference. "I'm working on it."

"Want to grab dinner? Same spot as that first night?"

He thought about the baseball game still playing—bottom of the seventh. Thought about the bull statue and their younger selves and all the stupid things they'd said and done and survived.

"Pick you up in twenty," he said.

Buster lifted his head as David stood, perhaps recognizing the sound of possibility. Some innings stretch longer than others. But eventually, you have to step back up to the plate.