Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last 22 years driving up and down the Carolinas as a minor league baseball scout, logging 400,000 miles on his dented F150, sleeping in roadside motels, and keeping a running list of 17-year-old lefties who can hit 90 mph without throwing out their shoulder. His biggest flaw, the one his ex-wife used to yell at him for during their 12 years of marriage, is that he holds grudges like they’re signed rookie cards, tucked away in acid-free sleeves and never forgotten. The oldest grudge dates back to 1991, senior prom, when Elara Voss never showed up to the diner where he was waiting with a corsage and a reservation at the fancy Italian place across town. He’d heard a week later she’d run off to Myrtle Beach with a pre-med student from the local college, and he’d never spoken to her again.
He’s at the annual 4th of July beer garden in Burlington, fresh off watching a 19-year-old pitcher from Hickory throw three hitless innings, when the heat hits him like a wet blanket. He grabs an IPA from the tented bar, leans against a splintered pine post, and watches a group of kids chase each other with glow sticks. The air smells like fried oreos, vinegar-soaked pickles, and cut grass, a cover band in the corner cranking a slightly off-key version of “Jack & Diane” that makes him grin despite himself.
A woman in cutoff denim shorts and a white linen tank top drops into the empty seat next to him, bare calf brushing his through the hole in his own frayed work shorts. She smells like jasmine, the same perfume Elara used to douse herself in before football games, and he tenses up before he even looks over. When he does, his throat goes tight. It’s her. Silver streaks run through the dark curly hair he used to twist between his fingers during study hall, laugh lines crinkle at the corners of her hazel eyes, and there’s a thin white scar snaking across her left knuckle that he doesn’t remember from high school.
She reaches for the black cherry seltzer she set on the table, knocks his beer bottle an inch to the left, and a single drop of cold IPA splatters on his sunburnt wrist. “Sorry,” she says, dabbing at it with a crumpled napkin, her cool fingers lingering on his skin for two beats longer than necessary. She blinks, then freezes, recognition snapping across her face. “Manny?”
He doesn’t soften. “Elara. You got a lot of nerve talking to me.”
Her mouth falls open. She leans in, so close their shoulders are pressed together, and he can feel the warmth of her sun-heated skin through the thin cotton of her tank. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You’re the one who never called me after the crash. I thought you bailed on me because you didn’t want to be tied down to a girl who’d just broken her arm and missed the rest of senior year.”
He blinks. The crash. No one ever told him about a crash. He’d left three notes on her front porch, called her house six times, and her dad had answered every time, barking that she didn’t want to talk to him, that he was a bad influence who’d never amount to anything chasing a stupid baseball dream.
She tells him the whole story, fast, like she’s been waiting 32 years to say it: she was driving her mom’s Camry to the diner, 10 minutes away from meeting him, when a drunk driver ran a red light and t-boned her passenger side. She spent three days in the hospital, broke her left arm, three ribs, and cracked her collarbone. Her dad, who’d always hated Manny for being “too rough around the edges,” threw out every note he left, told her Manny never checked in, that he’d gone to prom with some girl from the cheerleading squad instead.
The grudge he’s carried for three decades feels like it’s melting straight off his bones, fast as the sweat dripping down his back in the July heat. He’s furious at her dad, furious at himself for never showing up to her house in person instead of just calling, but mostly he’s just staring at her, at the way her silver hoop earrings catch the golden hour light, the way she tucks a stray curl behind her ear the exact same way she used to when she was nervous.
The first firework goes off with a deafening boom, painting the sky bright red, and the entire crowd around them cheers, standing up to get a better view. Elara grabs his hand without thinking, lacing their fingers together to yank him up next to her, and he doesn’t pull away. Her palm is calloused at the fingertips, she tells him later she’s been a landscape designer for 20 years, digging in the dirt every weekend, and he runs his thumb over the rough skin as they watch the fireworks burst blue and green and gold above them.
She leans in to yell over the noise of the explosions, her mouth brushing the shell of his ear, and he shivers. “I kept the card you gave me for my birthday, by the way. The Deion Sanders rookie. I still have it in my junk drawer at home.”
He turns to look at her, her face lit up neon pink from a burst of firework light, and he kisses her, slow, like he’s making up for 32 years of lost time. She kisses back, tastes like cherry seltzer and mint gum, her free hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck under his scouting hat. No one around them pays attention, too busy staring at the sky, and for a second it feels like they’re the only two people in the whole park.
When the last firework fizzles out, the crowd starts to disperse, grabbing their coolers and herding their half-asleep kids to their cars. They’re still holding hands, and neither of them makes a move to let go. He asks her if she wants to get pancakes at the 24-hour diner off I-40 tomorrow morning, the one with the pecan pie he’s been eating since he was 16, and she nods, grinning so wide the crinkles at the corners of her eyes show. She digs in her purse for a second, pulls out a crumpled, slightly faded 1990 Upper Deck Deion Sanders card, and presses it into his palm.
He tucks the card into the breast pocket of his worn scout shirt, thumb brushing the faded edge as he walks her to her beat up Subaru, the distant pop of leftover firecrackers fizzing in the warm dark behind them.
