Three Strikes, No Goldfish

The gray hairs at his temples had multiplied since Elena left — or maybe he'd just stopped noticing the slow erosion of his youth until there was nothing left to notice.

Dave sat alone in the baseball stadium, surrounded by families and couples, nursing a warm beer. He'd bought season tickets thinking it would make him feel connected to something traditional, something solid. Instead, it just emphasized how thoroughly he'd managed to isolate himself by forty-five.

Behind home plate, a fox darted across the field — a real one, confused by the lights, maybe rabid. The crowd gasped. Security scrambled. It reminded him of Elena, how she'd moved through their marriage sleek and unpredictable, always just out of reach until she finally wasn't there at all.

"She's a fox, Dave," his brother had said at their wedding, drunk and leering. Dave had laughed then, proud of having won something so wild. He hadn't understood that wild things don't get tamed; they just learn to tolerate the cage until they find an opening.

The goldfish — that ridiculous carnival prize they'd won on their first date — had outlasted their marriage by three years. Elena had left it behind, along with everything else that didn't fit into her new life. Dave had found himself feeding it every morning, watching it swim in endless circles, that stupid orange fish the only living thing that still depended on him.

"Third strike!" the announcer bellowed. The crowd roared.

Dave checked his phone. No messages. The goldfish was probably dead by now. His hair was definitely thinner. And somewhere out there, Elena was wild and free, and he was just another man in a stadium, pretending that baseball — that slow, meaningless rhythm of strikes and balls — could fill the silence where his life used to be.