The Seventh Inning Stretch

The rain started in the third inning—a relentless downpour that turned the dirt infield into mud and the stadium into a steam room. But nobody left. We'd paid too much for these seats, sacrificed too much to be here together, pretending things were still okay between us.

She sat beside me wearing that ridiculous baseball hat she'd bought at a souvenir stand, the brim pulled low over her eyes. I watched droplets of water bead on the fabric and spill over like tears she refused to cry in front of me. Her hair, usually perfectly straightened, had frizzed into wild tendrils around her face. I used to love touching that hair—running my fingers through it when we woke up Sunday mornings, before everything got complicated, before the job offers came from opposite coasts and the conversations turned into ultimatums.

"They're not calling it," she said, nodding toward the field where players slipped and slid through puddles.

"No refund either," I said, and immediately regretted it. The bitterness in my voice surprised us both.

She turned to me then, hat shadowing half her face. "You're not even watching the game. You haven't watched a single pitch."

I wasn't. I was watching her hands in her lap, the way her thumb kept rubbing against her ring finger where the diamond used to sit. The water streaming down the stadium roof created a curtain between us and the field, between us and the thousands of other fans who didn't realize their marriage was dissolving in real-time.

"Remember spring training?" she asked suddenly. "When we got caught in that storm in Arizona and ran back to the hotel soaking wet?"

I remembered. We'd ordered room service and made love with the windows open, listening to thunder and laughing about how we'd aged ten years that day but felt like teenagers. Now I watched a bead of water slide down her cheek and hang from her chin, defying gravity, refusing to fall.

"What are we doing, Sarah?" I heard myself ask.

The stadium lights flickered once, twice. The tarp finally rolled out across the field—a white sheet being pulled over a corpse. Her shoulders rose and fell. She took off the hat, smoothed back her wet hair, and for the first time all night, really looked at me.

"I don't know," she said. "I really don't know anymore."

Somewhere behind us, a beer vendor shouted into the rain. On the scoreboard, the message changed from "RAIN DELAY" to "GAME POSTPONED." The crowd groaned as one, and then people started rising from their seats, shaking out their umbrellas, heading toward the exits where dry clothes and separate cars waited.

We stayed sitting as the stadium emptied out, neither of us willing to make the first move toward goodbye.