Jude Rainer, 64, retired Midwest League minor league scout, didn’t want to be at the county fair. His neighbor had banged on his door at 4 PM, shoving a free entry ticket in his hand and saying if he spent one more night watching old game tapes alone she was going to donate his entire collection of signed baseballs to the high school booster club. He’d grumbled, laced up his scuffed work boots, pulled his faded 2002 Dayton Dragons cap over his graying hair, and caved. His left knee, replaced six months prior, ached with every step over the crumpled grass and gritty pavement dusted with funnel cake sugar. The air reeked of fried oreos, charcoal, and cut corn from the fields edging the fairgrounds, and a cover band off to the left was mangling a John Mellencamp track so bad Jude almost turned around and walked home.
He stopped at the lemonade stand first, figuring a cold drink would make the next hour tolerable. He was fumbling in his jeans pocket for cash when a woman’s voice, low and warm, came from next to him. “Jude Rainer? No way.” He looked over. She was leaning against the side of the stand, holding a plastic cup of lemonade, a scar slashing thin above her left eyebrow, and he knew her instantly. Lila Marlow. She’d been the 17-year-old bat girl for the Fort Wayne Wizards the summer of 2001, back when he was scouting their pitching roster. She’d taken a foul ball to the face during a pre-game warmup, and he’d carried her to the trainer’s room, stayed with her until her mom got to the stadium, gave her a signed ball from the team’s top prospect to make up for the stitches.
She laughed when he said he remembered, pushing a strand of chestnut hair back from her face. She was 40 now, worked as a graphic designer in Chicago, was back in town visiting her mom for the week. They stood close enough that their shoulders brushed when a group of kids screaming with cotton candy in their hands ran between them. “I still have that baseball, by the way,” she said, and her hand brushed his forearm when she spoke, light, warm, her nails painted a soft pink. “It’s on my desk at work. People ask about it all the time, I tell them the nicest scout in the league gave it to me after I almost got my brain knocked out by a fastball.”
Jude felt his face heat up, a stupid, giddy feeling he hadn’t had since he was a teenager himself. He fought it at first, that stupid pull. She was 24 years younger than him. He’d known her when she was a kid, still wearing braces and writing band names on the side of her cleats. It felt wrong, almost dirty, to notice how the sun hit the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, how she smelled like coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm, how her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes the same way it did when she was 17 and stealing sunflower seeds from the dugout snack bin. He told himself he should say nice to see you, walk away, go find his neighbor and beg to go home. But he didn’t.
They wandered over to the beer garden, grabbed two bottles of cheap lager, sat at a chipped picnic table at the edge of the tent, out of the noise of the crowd. Her knee brushed his under the table every time she shifted to get more comfortable, and he didn’t move his leg away. She told him about her job, designing album art for indie bands, about her divorce two years prior, about how she’d been thinking of moving back to Ohio, sick of the crowds and the rent in Chicago. She leaned in when she talked, so close he could taste the lemon on her breath when she laughed. “I had the biggest crush on you back then, you know,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear, and he almost choked on his beer. “Used to make extra copies of the team roster every week just so I’d have an excuse to walk over to your seat by the dugout. You always looked so focused, scribbling in that little notebook of yours.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I noticed you. Thought you were way too smart to be wasting your summers wiping mud off cleats for a bunch of idiot 20-year-old ballplayers. Was real happy when your mom told me you got into art school a couple years later.” A gust of wind picked up then, blowing her hair straight into his face, soft, smelling like that coconut sunscreen again. He reached up without thinking, tucking the strands behind her ear, his calloused fingers brushing the soft skin of her cheek, the edge of that old scar. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into his touch for half a second, her hand coming up to cover his, her palm soft against his, rough from 32 years of holding radar guns and turning the pages of scouting notebooks.
He held the diner door open for her when they got there, and when she stepped past him, she pressed a soft, quick kiss to the edge of his jaw, warm, sweet, the vanilla of her lip balm lingering on his skin. He squeezed her hand a little tighter, stepping into the cool of the diner behind her, the bell above the door jingling loud enough to drown out the last of the fair’s crowd noise.
