Rafe Mendez, 53, has spent the last four years living out of a dented Ford F-150, driving between small town baseball diamonds across the Deep South as a minor league scout for the Atlanta Braves organization. He has a rule he’s never broken until tonight: no one sits next to him at a bar. It’s less a preference than a defense mechanism, leftover from the day his ex-wife packed her bags and moved to Nashville with an orthodontist, leaving a note that said he cared more about 19-year-old pitchers’ curveballs than he ever cared about her. He’s carried that guilt like a pebble in his shoe ever since, convinced any flicker of interest in another woman makes him the loser she said he was.
The bar in rural southern Alabama smells like fried pickles that have sat in the grease too long, sour draft beer, and the faint, sweet tang of pickled okra jars lined up behind the counter. The AC rattles so loud it drowns out the jukebox half the time, and the vinyl booths are cracked so bad you have to tuck your jeans under your legs to avoid sticking to the foam underneath. Rafe is halfway through his second Budweiser, scribbling radar gun readings into a beat-up leather notebook, when a shadow falls over the empty stool next to him.
“Mind if I sit? All the other seats are taken, and my friend just bailed on me because her kid got a concussion at soccer practice.” The voice is low, warm, a little rough around the edges like she’s spent the day yelling over lawn mowers. Rafe looks up, and his throat goes dry. She’s wearing a faded floral dress that hits her mid-calf, scuffed white cowboy boots, and her dark hair is pulled back in a loose braid that has a few stray baby’s breath strands stuck in it. There’s a smudge of dark dirt on her left wrist, like she was digging in soil that morning. He almost says no, almost makes up a lie about saving the seat for a buddy, but he’s tired of being a hermit. He nods, and she slides onto the stool.
Her denim jacket brushes his bicep when she sits, and he catches a whiff of gardenias and lime seltzer, sharp and sweet, nothing like the heavy perfume his ex used to douse herself in. She orders a Blue Moon, and when the bartender slides it over, she reaches past his peanut bowl to grab the napkin next to his elbow, knocking the bowl off the edge of the bar. They both lunge for it at the same time, their knuckles brushing hard, and Rafe feels a jolt shoot up his arm like he touched a live wire. He fumbles the bowl, peanuts spilling all over the tile floor, and she laughs so hard she snorts. He finds himself laughing too, a sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months.
He learns her name is Lila, she runs the flower shop on Main Street, she’s been divorced from the local high school athletic director for six months, and the entire town has an unspoken rule that no one talks to her, lest the AD, a petty, hot-headed guy who once benched a kid for wearing the wrong color socks, retaliate. Rafe’s first instinct is to pull away, to not get involved in small town drama, to stick to his rule of keeping everyone at arm’s length. But Lila leans in when he shows her his scout notebook, her shoulder pressing firmly to his for two full seconds as she squints at the scribbled numbers, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin t-shirt. She has a fleck of gold in her left iris, he notices, and when she talks about planting marigolds outside her shop that morning, her eyes light up so bright he forgets what he was going to say next.
She teases him for the half-eaten gas station burrito sitting on the bar next to his beer, says it looks like it’s made of leftover construction debris and regret, and offers him leftover peach cobbler from her fridge if he wants something that doesn’t taste like motor oil. He teases her back for wearing cowboy boots with a dress covered in sunflowers, says she looks like she just wandered off the set of a 1998 Shania Twain music video. She swats his arm playfully, and the contact makes his skin tingle for five full minutes after. He fights the voice in his head screaming that he’s being unfaithful, that he doesn’t deserve to have fun, that his ex was right about him being selfish. For the first time in four years, that voice sounds quiet, almost distant.
Last call blares over the intercom, and the door slams open. It’s the AD, red-faced, drunk, glaring straight at them. He stomps over, slams his fist on the bar, and snarls “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my wife?” Lila stands up fast, puts her hand flat on Rafe’s bicep, and says, sharp as a knife, “Ex-wife. And it’s none of your goddamn business. Get out of my face before I call the sheriff.” The AD stares at her for a long second, huffs, and storms back out, slamming the door so hard the neon beer sign flickers. Rafe realizes his heart isn’t racing from fear. It’s racing from excitement, from the thrill of breaking every stupid rule he’s spent four years clinging to.
He walks her to her beat-up silver pickup in the parking lot, the air thick with the sound of crickets and the sweet smell of jasmine from the bush by the entrance. She leans in before she opens the door, kisses him soft on the corner of his mouth, and she tastes like peach hard candy and wheat beer. He doesn’t pull away. He asks if the cobbler offer is still good, and she laughs, the sound loud and bright in the quiet dark, and says it’s even better cold. He tosses his scout notebook into the passenger seat of her truck, and follows her up the steps to her front porch.
