Rico Morales, 57, has spent 22 years scouting minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals farm system, logging 40,000 miles a year in a dented 2018 F-150 with a cooler of cheap beer and a stack of scouting reports in the backseat. His worst flaw, by his own admission, is that he’s turned into a hermit since his wife left him for a CPA in Tampa eight years prior; he avoids small town events like they’re contagious, only talks to other guys at the hardware store or the stands of rookie league games, and hasn’t let anyone sit in his truck’s passenger seat for longer than a 10 minute ride to the auto shop in three years. He only shows up to the county fire department’s annual summer cookout because his high school best friend, now the fire chief, threatened to tow his truck if he bailed again.
He’s planted by the rolling beer cooler at the far edge of the parking lot, hood up on his faded Cardinals hoodie even though it’s 78 degrees out, sipping a PBR and ignoring the shouts of kids bouncing on the inflatable obstacle course, when someone bumps his elbow hard enough to slosh half an ounce of beer down the front of his sweatshirt. He’s halfway to a gruff retort when he looks down and sees Clara Bennett, 49, the new part-time librarian who moved to town three months prior, holding a crumpled paper napkin and mouthing an apology. He knows who she is; half the town’s been gossiping about the erotic book club she hosts in the library’s basement meeting room every other Thursday, the older women showing up with wine coolers and leaving giggling like teenagers, the local church group demanding the mayor shut it down for “corrupting the community.”
She leans in before he can say he’s fine, dabbing at the beer stain on his sweatshirt, and he can smell lavender hand cream on her wrists, sun-warmed coconut from the leave-in conditioner in her honey-streaked hair, the faint fizz of cherry seltzer on her breath. Her shoulder presses against his bicep for three full seconds longer than necessary, and when she looks up at him, her hazel eyes hold his gaze, no awkward look away, no shy smile, just a sharp, curious glint that makes his neck feel hot. He’s equal parts annoyed at himself for reacting like a flustered 16 year old at his first prom and hungry for more of that contact, the kind of quiet, unforced attention he hasn’t gotten in so long he forgot what it felt like. He’d written off any kind of casual or romantic connection years ago, convinced he was too set in his ways, too cranky from 10 hour days sitting in ballpark stands, too bitter about how his marriage ended to bother with the hassle of getting to know someone new.
He makes a dumb joke about the beer adding character to the 10 year old sweatshirt, and she snorts, a loud, unselfconscious sound that cuts through the noise of the grill sizzling 20 feet away. She says she saw him in the library two days prior, tucking a dog-eared copy of Lonesome Dove under his arm like he was smuggling something illegal, and he’s shocked; he thought he snuck in and out without anyone noticing, he’d been too embarrassed to check out the book at the front desk, planned to bring it back after he finished re-reading it for the fourth time. She teases him about being a closet western nerd, he teases her back about the town’s pearl-clutching over her book club, and she leans in a little closer, lowering her voice so no one walking by can hear, says half the stuff they discuss is just things most people over 50 stopped making time for decades ago, no scandal, just people tired of pretending they don’t want to have fun anymore.
The noise of the cookout fades into background static when she nods toward the tree line at the back of the fire station, says there’s a creek 100 yards back that’s quiet, no kids screaming, no old guys asking him about last year’s draft class, if he wants to get away for a little bit. He hesitates for half a second, every hermit instinct screaming to say no, go home, rewatch the same Reds game he’s had saved on his DVR for two weeks, but he nods, puts his half-empty beer down on the cooler, and follows her across the grass, his boots crunching on fallen oak leaves as they walk.
The creek is shallow, cool air rolling off the water, the only sound the gurgle of current over smooth rocks and the distant call of a woodpecker in the trees. She sits down on a weathered fallen log, patting the spot next to her, and he sits, leaving six inches of space between them at first, until she shifts, leaning her shoulder against his bicep again, warm and solid. He notices a smattering of freckles across her forearm, a tiny silver tattoo of a book on her wrist, and when a mosquito lands on her skin, he reaches over without thinking, swatting it away, his fingers brushing her soft, sun-warmed skin for a beat. She turns her face up to him, her mouth slightly parted, and he leans in, kissing her slow, no rush, the taste of cherry seltzer and mint gum on her lips, her hand coming up to rest lightly on the side of his neck, no pressure, no demand. He’s not thinking about the gossip, not thinking about the 12 game road trip he has to leave for in three days, not thinking about the last eight years of eating frozen dinners alone on his couch. He’s just there, his hand resting on her knee, the sun filtering through the oak leaves dappling her face, and he doesn’t pull away.
