Ronan O’Malley is 59, a part-time minor league baseball scout who’s spent the last three years driving 30,000 miles a year across the Midwest, sleeping in roadside motels, and living out of a dented Ford F-150 with a cooler of cheap beer and a stack of scouting notebooks in the passenger seat. He lost his wife Eileen to ovarian cancer three years prior, and his biggest flaw is that he’s turned down every half-hearted invite to dinners, bar nights, and community cookouts since, convinced anyone who’s nice to him is just pitying the lonely widower who can’t talk about anything other than fastball velocity and infield footwork. He’s in southern Ohio this week, scouting a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher with a curveball that drops so fast it makes catchers wince, and the motel owner badgered him so hard about the weekly oyster night at the downtown bar The Rusty Glove that he finally caved, if only to get out of the room that smelled like old carpet and mildew.
The bar is sticky under his forearms when he sits at the far end, faded Cincinnati Reds cap pulled low, scouting notebook half-hidden under a pint of amber lager. It smells like fried dill pickles, salt, and citrus from the seltzers being poured down the bar, and the jukebox spits out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts so loud the wood paneling hums. He’s halfway through his first dozen oysters, wiping brine off his chin with a paper napkin, when she sits down two stools over. He doesn’t look at her at first, until the bartender slides her a vodka grapefruit, the glass tilting so far liquid sloshes over the rim, and both of them reach for it at the same time. Their knuckles brush. His are scarred from a broken finger he got playing college ball in the 80s, hers are rough, dotted with a faint smudge of wood stain, warm even through the cold condensation on the glass.
“Thanks,” she says, holding eye contact for three full beats, a half-smirk playing on her mouth. “I swear I’m not usually that much of a disaster around drinks.” Her hair is auburn, streaked with sun, pulled back in a loose braid, and she’s wearing a frayed Ohio State hoodie, no wedding band on her left hand. He recognizes her immediately. She’s Clara Hale, wife of the local high school baseball team’s head coach, the guy he’s been trading notes with all week about the lefty prospect. Everyone in town talks about her, how she restores vintage furniture out of her workshop, how she brings homemade cookies to every game. He’d seen her at the field twice this week, sitting on the bleachers alone, watching practice.
Ronan laughs, wiping a drop of grapefruit seltzer off his notebook. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve had so many Gatorade and beer spills on these notes I can barely read half of them anyway.” She moves to the stool next to him ten minutes later, when a group of construction workers pile in, loud and rowdy, taking the seats on her other side. Their knees brush under the bar, denim on denim, and she doesn’t pull away. She leans in when she talks, close enough he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the salt of the oysters on her breath, to be heard over the jukebox. She tells him she’s been separated from Jim for eight months, hasn’t told anyone in town because the state playoffs are three weeks away, and she doesn’t want the team distracted by gossip that would paint Jim as the heartbroken good guy and her as the villain who left him mid-season.
That’s when the conflict hits him, sharp and warm in his chest. He knows he should leave. If anyone sees them talking this close, word will get back to Jim before the sun comes up, he’ll lose access to the prospect, and he’ll be back to being the sad widower everyone whispers about. He hasn’t flirted with anyone in 35 years, hasn’t wanted to, and part of him feels sick with guilt, like he’s cheating on Eileen even though she’s been gone three years. But Clara keeps leaning in, her hand brushing his forearm when she laughs at his story about the time a 16-year-old prospect threw a fastball so hard it shattered his clipboard, her knee pressing firmer against his under the bar, no hesitation. She tells him she’s seen him at the field every day this week, sitting in his truck with his notebook, and she’d been working up the nerve to talk to him all week, because he looked like the only person in town who didn’t want to ask her about Jim or the team.
He doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until she leans in even closer, her lips almost brushing his ear, her breath warm against his skin. “I don’t care who sees us,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “I’m tired of hiding.” He looks down at their hands, resting an inch apart on the sticky bar top, and reaches over, lacing his fingers through hers. Her palm is rough from sanding oak, calloused at the base of her thumb, and she squeezes his hand so tight his scarred finger aches a little.
They leave the bar an hour later, the air cool now that the sun’s gone down, fireflies blinking in the oak trees lining the main street. His scouting notebook is tucked in his back pocket, unopened, for the first time all week. She tells him she has a fridge full of stout in her workshop, and a 1920s rocking chair she’s restoring for her grandmother, and asks if he wants to come see it. He nods, squeezing her hand, and lets her lead the way down the sidewalk, the sound of their boots scuffing the asphalt mixing with the distant hum of crickets in the cornfields at the edge of town.
