The Seventh Inning Stretch

The stadium lights hummed above us, casting everything in that golden-hour glow that makes even the most mundane moments look cinematic. I hated baseball. Always had. But tonight, with the score tied 3-3 in the bottom of the seventh, I understood why Marcus loved it.

"Check this out." Marcus tapped my shoulder, his phone screen bright against his palm. "Bro, your face looks exactly like that meme of the disappointed math lady."

I rolled my eyes but leaned in anyway. The iPhone camera reflected us both — me in my thrifted flannel that I'd carefully distressed, Marcus in his varsity jacket that he'd earned legitimately. We looked like we belonged in different coming-of-age movies.

"Delete that," I said, but I was already grinning.

"No way. This is evidence." He swiped, saved, pocketed the phone. "Evidence that you're actually having fun despite your whole 'too cool for sports' aesthetic."

The crack of a bat interrupted us. The crowd surged to its feet. Marcus jumped up, screaming at a volume that made my ears ring, completely unbothered about being uncool. That was the thing about him — he was incapable of performing irony. Everything was genuine, every emotion worn on his varsity jacket sleeve.

I watched him instead of the game. Watched how his hands moved when he talked about stats and players whose names I'd already forgotten. Watched how he didn't check his notifications once, didn't care about his story, didn't worry if he looked excited enough or chill enough or whatever enough.

The seventh inning stretch music started — some pop song that was everywhere last year. People began filing out for concessions and bathroom breaks.

"You good?" Marcus asked, finally noticing I'd gone quiet.

"Yeah." I pulled out my own phone, thumb hovering over Instagram. "Just thinking about how I need to post something or people will think I fell off the earth."

Marcus laughed. "Dude. We're at a baseball game. It's literally not that deep."

He wasn't wrong. But it was that deep. At fifteen, everything was that deep — your posts, your friendships, whether you were the kind of person who knew baseball stats or the kind who pretended not to care.

"Hey." Marcus bumped my shoulder. "Take a picture of us? For real this time. No meme faces."

I raised my phone, framing us against the blur of the field, the lights, the endless night ahead. For once, I didn't worry about the angle or the lighting or whether it would get enough likes. I just clicked.

Some friendships survive because they're easy. Others because they're worth the work. Ours survived because Marcus kept dragging me to things I claimed to hate, and I kept letting him, and somewhere between the pretense and the reality, we forgot which was which.

"Best friend," I said, showing him the photo.

"Best friend," he agreed, and went back to screaming at the umpire.