The Seventh Inning Stretch

The orange peel sat on Maya's desk like a crime scene—curls of rind, the scent of citrus hanging in the stale office air. Her phone lit up again with Mark's texts. He wanted to meet after the team-building baseball game tonight. She'd ignored eight messages so far.

"You coming?" Tom from Accounting asked, leaning in her doorway. He adjusted his tie, nervous energy radiating off him like heat. "Everyone's heading over together."

Maya looked at her palm—there was that small burn scar from the night she and Mark got drunk on cheap tequila and tried to make popcorn at 3 AM. They'd been married three months then. Now, five years later, the burn was a permanent mark, but the marriage was anything but.

"I'll catch up," she said. "Finish something first."

The baseball stadium was a cavern of memories she hadn't asked for. She and Mark had season tickets their first year together, before the promotions and the mortgage and the silence that grew like ivy between them. Now, as she took her seat beside her coworkers, the crack of the bat echoed hollow in her chest.

"Beer?" Tom offered, sitting beside her. The stadium lights caught the sweat on his forehead. He was handsome in the way men who've never been crushed are handsome—open, unguarded.

Maya shook her head. She remembered Mark's palm against hers at games like this, how he'd squeeze her fingers during紧张 moments, how she'd trace the lifeline on his hand and pretend she believed in forever.

Her phone buzzed again. Mark: "We need to talk."

The seventh inning stretch came—row upon row of people standing, stretching, singing. Maya felt something stretch inside her too, something that had been pulled too tight for too long. She stood with them, looked at the orange sunset bleeding across the sky, and made a choice.

She typed back: "Not tonight. Not ever."

As she deleted his contact, someone hit a home run. The crowd roared. For the first time in five years, Maya couldn't hear her own life falling apart.