The Seventh Inning Stretch

The old golden retriever had been dead for three years, but Marcus still found himself driving past the park on Tuesday evenings, that hollow ache in his chest flaring like an old injury. His iPhone sat silent on the passenger seat — no texts from Sarah, who'd left him eight months ago for someone who didn't drink bourbon for breakfast and forget anniversaries.

He parked anyway, watching the baseball game from his car. High schoolers in too-clean uniforms, their shouts carrying through the open window. This was where he'd taught Rusty to catch a tennis ball, where he'd proposed to Sarah on a perfect June evening, before everything curdled into disappointment and quiet resentments.

His phone buzzed. A LinkedIn notification. He almost threw it out the window.

Marcus got out and started running — not away, not toward anything, just the motion itself. His breath fogged in the cooling air. Forty-two years old and he was running laps around a baseball diamond like a man trying to outrun his own mediocre life. His knees protested. His lungs burned. It felt almost like prayer.

A dog barked somewhere in the distance. The sound stopped him cold, hands on his knees, gasping. He remembered Rusty's final day, the vet's office smelling of antiseptic and false sympathy. Sarah had held him while he wept, and he'd thought: this is what love is. Not the grand gestures or the wedding vows, but showing up for the ugliest moments.

He'd forgotten that somewhere along the way.

Marcus walked back to his car, pulled out his iPhone. His thumb hovered over Sarah's name in his contacts. Not to beg. Just to say: I'm sorry I stopped showing up. I'm sorry I let us become roommates who shared a bed and nothing else.

The baseball field lights flickered on, casting long shadows across the empty outfield. He typed the message, deleted it, typed again. His hand trembled.

Somewhere in the distance, the dog barked again — joyful, insistent. Marcus finally hit send, then leaned back against his car and watched the moths dance under the lights, waiting for a response that might never come, feeling, for the first time in months, like he was finally running toward something instead of away.