The Seventh Inning Stretch

I'd been running from that conversation for three months when it finally caught up with me at 2 AM, the bathroom faucet dripping a steady rhythm into the sink. My mother's diamond band, too loose since I lost the baby weight, circled my finger like a failed promise.

Marcus's baseball hat sat on the counter—priced at five bucks from some gas station somewhere between Ohio and wherever we were going next. He'd tossed it there two hours ago when he told me he wasn't leaving his wife after all. "Property of Lakewood Tigers," the faded embroidery read. Property of. The word stuck in my throat like swallowed glass.

The water kept dripping. Somewhere in the apartment, Chloe—his childhood dog, the one he'd loved longer than he'd ever loved me—whined at the door, sensing the shift in atmospheric pressure. She'd stopped greeting me when I came over last month. Animals knew.

"You're thirty-five years old," Marcus had said, fully dressed again, reaching for his hat, then thinking better of it. "This isn't a game. This isn't baseball. You don't get infinite innings."

The truth was, I'd never even liked baseball. I just liked the way he looked in that hat, back when he still looked at me like I was the only woman in the stadium. Back when he was mine.

Now his dog was scratching at the bathroom door, and his hat was on my counter, and his wife was waiting in a house I'd never seen, and I was just the woman in the mirror who'd believed every pitch was coming straight down the middle.

I turned off the water. The sudden silence rang louder than the dripping had.

"Keep it," Marcus's voice echoed from the hallway. "The hat. It looks better on you anyway."

The front door clicked shut. Chloe whined once more, then went quiet.

I picked up the hat. Property of Lakewood Tigers. Property of someone who had somewhere else to be.

I put it on my head and watched the woman in the mirror do the same. She looked tired. She looked ready for the bottom of the ninth, two outs, full count, and absolutely nothing left to lose.

"Game over," I whispered to no one at all.

Outside, a car engine started. I didn't look out the window to see which one. I already knew.