The Seventh Inning Stretch

Elena sat three rows down, her silver-streaked hair catching the afternoon light like something holy. She hadn't looked like that when we divorced — the hair was still dark then, pulled back tight as she signed the papers without meeting my eyes. Now it fell loose around her shoulders, the same way it had the night we met at this very stadium, twenty years and a lifetime ago.

I shifted in my seat, the plastic warm against my thighs. Behind us, some kid dropped his ice cream. The crowd roared as our center fielder caught a fly ball, but I couldn't focus on the game. I couldn't focus on anything except the way Elena kept checking her phone, probably waiting for him.

The dog had died two months ago. Barnaby had been hers in the divorce, a compromise I'd accepted because I'd wanted to be the bigger person. But she'd called me that morning in February, voice cracking as she described finding him cold on the kitchen floor. I'd gone over, and we'd sat together on her couch, not touching, crying over a creature who'd loved us both so completely that he'd never noticed we'd stopped loving each other.

"You coming?" The guy beside me nudged my arm. Seventh inning stretch. Everyone standing, singing that damn song about buying peanuts and Cracker Jack.

I stood. My knees popped. Thirty-eight years old and sounding like my father.

Down in row three, Elena stood too. Someone behind her shouted something, and she turned, laughing, and our eyes locked across the thirty feet of plastic seats and missed opportunities and all the things we'd never said aloud.

Her hair moved in the breeze coming off the bay. She didn't wave. She didn't smile. She just held my gaze for three seconds, then turned back to her phone.

I sat down as the chorus ended. The baseball game continued. But I already knew the final score, had known it for years. Some losses you walk off the field with. Some losses, you carry like a phantom limb, aching at the weather change.