Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last seven years treating casual social interaction like a 3-2 count with a hotheaded rookie fastball pitcher: tensed up, waiting for the strike, ready to trudge back to the dugout the second things go south. He’s a minor league scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates, spends 10 months a year crisscrossing the Southeast in a beat-up 2016 Ford F-150, eating gas station chili dogs, jotting notes about teenage pitchers’ arm slots and off-speed control, and the only person he talks to for more than 10 minutes at a time during off-season is his 8-year-old golden retriever, Moe. His next-door neighbor Jim dragged him to the weekly trivia night at Asheville’s Twin Rivers Brewery on a misty Tuesday, calling in the favor Manny owed him for covering Moe’s emergency vet bill when the dog tore his ACL chasing a squirrel last spring.
He recognizes his trivia partner before she says a word: Lila Marquez, Elena’s younger cousin, the one who’d shown up to Elena’s breast cancer funeral seven years prior with a tattoo of Elena’s favorite sunflower inked on her left wrist, hugged him so tight he thought his ribs would crack, then moved to Portland and fell off the family radar entirely. She’s 38 now, her thick dark hair streaked with a single bold silver stripe at the temple, wearing a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour t-shirt under an unbuttoned linen overshirt, frayed denim cutoffs, scuffed white canvas sneakers, and silver hoops that glint when she tilts her head to laugh at the trivia host’s dumb joke about hazy IPAs tasting like grass clippings. She slides into the plastic booth seat right next to him, their thighs brushing through the thin, worn fabric of his work jeans, and says “Holy shit, Manny? I thought you never left your porch, let alone came to a bar.”
The first hour is awkward, stiff as a rookie’s first major league at-bat. He keeps darting his eyes away when she catches him staring, feels his ears heat up when their hands brush reaching for the same crumpled answer sheet, the callus on her thumb rough from months of repotting succulents for the new shop she tells him she opened downtown three months prior, after quitting her graphic design job in Portland. The smell of her peppermint lip balm mixes with the piney IPA he’s nursing, the sticky linoleum under his scuffed work boots sticking a little every time he shifts his weight, the hum of the 40-person crowd around them fading to soft background noise when they both blurt out the answer to the 1972 Led Zeppelin deep cut question at the exact same time. She grins at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and for half a second he forgets he’s supposed to feel guilty for talking to her, for noticing how her knee presses firmer against his when she leans in to whisper a guess about the 90s MLB trivia round.
He’s torn the whole rest of the night, a war waging in his chest so loud he can barely hear the host’s questions half the time. Half of him is screaming that this is wrong, that Lila is family, that Elena would roll in her grave if she saw him laughing so hard at Lila’s impression of their old strict Catholic high school principal that he snorts beer out his nose. The other half is buzzing, light and warm, like he did when he was 22 and first asked Elena out to a single-A minor league game, like he hasn’t felt in the seven years since she got sick. They win the $50 bar tab by 12 points, split a plate of loaded tater tots drowned in cheese and bacon, stay until the bar staff starts stacking folding chairs around them, the rain tapping harder against the roll-up garage door that opens out to the gravel parking lot.
He was going to walk home, it’s only 12 blocks, but Lila insists on driving him, says he’ll catch a cold tramping through the cold drizzle in just his thin Pirates hoodie. Her beat-up Subaru Outback smells like cedar and citrus air freshener, the radio playing a deep cut Tom Petty track low enough that they don’t have to talk over it, they pull into his rutted gravel driveway and sit there for 10 minutes, talking about Elena’s old obsession with terrible 80s rom-coms, about the 17-year-old left-handed pitcher Manny scouted last month in Alabama who throws 97 mph and has a curveball that makes batters look like toddlers tripping over their own feet. She reaches over, touches the faded polaroid of Elena he keeps taped to his dashboard, her finger brushing the edge of the photo, and says “She always told me you were the best thing that ever happened to her. She’d hate that you’re holed up alone all the time, refusing to have any fun.”
He leans in before he can talk himself out of it, his hand brushing the sunflower tattoo on her wrist first, then cupping her jaw, the kiss soft, slow, no rush, he can taste the peach seltzer she was drinking all night, the rain tapping louder against the truck windows, Moe barking inside the cottage like he knows someone’s at the door. She kisses him back, her hand tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck, and when they pull away she’s smiling, no pity, no awkward guilt, just easy, unforced warmth.
He asks her if she wants to come in, see the vintage baseball card collection he’s been working on since he was 10 years old, the one Elena used to tease him about for wasting half his paycheck on rare 1960s Pirates cards. She nods, grabs her canvas tote bag off the passenger seat, and follows him up the weathered wooden porch steps, Moe greeting them at the front door, tail wagging so hard his whole rear end wiggles.
