The Seventh Inning Stretch

The spinach was stuck between your teeth when you told me you were leaving. Not right between — wedged way back, visible only when you laughed at that joke about the baseball player and the bear. Your laugh was always too loud, like you were performing joy for an audience I couldn't see.

Our golden retriever, Buster, sensed it before I did. He'd been sleeping at my feet all evening, but when your phone buzzed with what I now know was her text, he lifted his head and growled — a low, guttural sound I'd never heard from him in seven years. Dogs know. They smell the infidelity like rotting meat beneath the floorboards.

"It's not about her," you said, spearing another piece of spinach. "It's about us. We're like that team you always talk about from '04. Good on paper, but we can't close."

The baseball metaphor stung. You knew I hated sports, but you kept trying to find a language I'd understand. We were like that cursed team everyone thought would win it all, until they didn't. Until the curse became the only thing that mattered.

"You have to bear with me here," I said, my voice cracking. "Twenty years. You're ending twenty years over text messages?"

You didn't answer. You just chewed that spinach like it was the only real thing left in the room.

Later, after you'd packed your suitcase and Buster had finally stopped barking at your retreating taillights, I sat on the back porch with a beer I didn't want. The neighbor's kids were playing baseball in the street, their shouts carrying across the dark. Someone hit a home run. The ball landed in my garden, crushing the spinach seedlings I'd planted last week — the ones you'd said were "a good hobby for someone with too much time on their hands."

I buried the ball next to where Buster lay curled against my leg, breathing in that weird, rhythmic way dogs have when they're dreaming. In the morning, I'd have to decide whether to dig up the spinach or let it rot. Tonight, I just watched the darkness and listened to my dog dream of chasing something he could never quite catch.