Moe Alvarez, 57, has been a minor league baseball scout for 18 years, long enough to know the first rule of transient work: don’t sleep with anyone in the towns you’re only passing through. He’s followed that rule religiously since his wife Elena died six years prior, when he quit his corporate sales job to hit the road, trading a 401k and a white picket fence for a beat-up Ford F-150, a stack of scouting clipboards, and a strict no-strings policy for every stop between Georgia and Arizona. He’s in south Georgia for three months, scouting a low-A league team’s left fielder who can throw a 95 mile an hour fastball but can’t hit a curveball to save his life, and he’s spent every Tuesday and Friday night at Jimmie’s Tap, the only dive bar within 10 miles that serves cold PBR and doesn’t blast EDM so loud you can’t hear yourself think.
He’s three beers deep on a humid late July night, sweat sticking his faded Detroit Tigers cap to his forehead, scribbling notes on a crumpled clipboard when the bar’s temporary owner drops a fourth cold one down in front of him, so cold the condensation drips down the side onto the sticky Formica bar top. Moe looks up, and there’s Rita, Jimmie’s daughter, who’s been running the bar while her dad recovers from knee replacement surgery, her sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a faded 1995 Braves jersey hanging loose over cutoff denim shorts, a faint smudge of barbecue sauce on her left wrist. He’s seen her every time he’s come in, has only ever exchanged three sentences with her total, all about beer orders, and he’s actively avoided talking to her longer because he knows Jimmie is the local high school baseball coach he’s supposed to meet next week to discuss a teen recruit, and mixing work with anything personal is the fastest way to mess up a scouting gig.
She leans over to wipe a puddle of spilled beer next to his elbow, her bare forearm brushing his, and he catches a whiff of coconut shampoo mixed with the charcoal smoke from the grill out back and the faint vanilla of her lip balm. “I’ve been wondering for two months if you’re a cop or an insurance fraud investigator,” she says, nodding at his clipboard, her hazel eyes holding his a beat longer than necessary, no trace of awkwardness. “Turns out you’re just a baseball guy, huh? Heard you asking the left fielder about his swing last week.”
Moe blinks, surprised she’s paid that much attention. He’s gotten used to being invisible, the quiet guy in the baseball cap who sits in the back of the stands and leaves before the final out. “Scout,” he says, tapping the edge of the clipboard, his throat dryer than it should be. “Looking to see if any of these kids are worth moving up the chain.”
She laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the hum of the neon Busch sign above the bar, and she leans against the counter across from him, her elbow only a few inches from his. “Knew it. You watch people too close to be a regular drunk. I’m Rita, by the way. You’ve been coming here two months and you’ve never told me your name.”
He tells her. She repeats it, slow, like she’s testing how it sounds, and he feels something tight in his chest loosen, a feeling he hasn’t had since Elena died. He fights it immediately, reminding himself he’s leaving for a scout conference in Phoenix in two weeks, that Jimmie is his professional contact, that getting involved with anyone here is a terrible idea. He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave when she slides a plate of fried green tomatoes across the bar to him, crispy and dusted with cajun seasoning, still steaming. “Saw you turn these down last week,” she says, grinning. “Heard you mumble something about per diem being tight. On the house.”
He takes one, bites into it, the crunch loud in the quiet of the bar, most of the regulars having left an hour prior. It’s the best thing he’s eaten all month. They talk for the next hour, about baseball, about the vintage motorcycle she’s restoring in her garage on weekends, about the way Elena used to drag him to minor league games back in Detroit before she got sick. He doesn’t mean to tell her that last part, it just slips out, and she doesn’t pity him, just nods, says her mom died four years ago, that she gets the urge to run from anything that feels too permanent.
Last call comes and goes, the only other patron left stumbles out to his truck, and Rita locks the front door, flipping the open sign to closed before she slides onto the stool next to him, her knee brushing his under the bar, the denim of her shorts rough against his khakis. “I know you’re leaving soon,” she says, no preamble, her eyes fixed on his, no games, no pressure. “I don’t want a ring or a cross-country road trip or anything. I just got tired of staring at you from behind the bar for two months, wondering what your laugh sounded like when you weren’t holding it back.”
Moe sits quiet for a second, his heart thudding in his chest, every rule he’s made for himself over the last six years screaming at him to say thanks but no thanks, to grab his clipboard and leave, to not mess up a good thing. Instead, he reaches out, brushes the faint smudge of barbecue sauce off her left wrist with his thumb, her skin warm and soft under his touch, and she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. He tells her he’s got a cooler of cold beer in the back of his truck, that there’s an old little league field ten minutes down the road with bleachers that face east, that they can watch the sun come up if she wants.
She grins, grabs her keys off the hook behind the bar, shoves a pack of peanut M&Ms into her pocket on the way out, and follows him through the back door of the bar, the humid night air wrapping around them the second they step outside, crickets chirping loud in the oak trees lining the parking lot. He holds the truck door open for her, and when she climbs in, her hand brushes the back of his neck, light and warm, and for the first time in six years, he doesn’t make an excuse to pull away.
