Elias Voss, 52, has spent the last nine years driving up and down the East Coast as a minor league baseball scout, logging 70,000 miles a year in his beat-up F-150, his backseat perpetually stacked with radar guns, scouting reports, and half-empty bags of salted peanuts. His biggest flaw, per his only remaining college roommate, is that he’s turned “stubborn loyalty to a ghost” into a personality trait: he hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since his wife, Lila, died of ovarian cancer four years prior, turning down every set-up, every sideways glance from a stranger at a bar, every invitation to cookout or holiday party that didn’t revolve around baseball. He tells himself it’s easier that way, no messy feelings, no chance of letting anyone down.
He pulls into the parking lot of the tiki bar off I-95 in Port St. Lucie at 7:17 p.m. on a Tuesday, still sticky from sitting in the bleachers all day watching 19-year-olds throw 95-mile-an-hour fastballs, the salt air sticking to the back of his neck under his worn team windbreaker. The bar is half-empty, only a handful of regulars hunched over beer mugs at the far end, the jukebox spitting out a scratchy recording of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” He slides onto the middle bar stool, sets his clipboard on the counter, and flags the bartender.
She turns, and he freezes. It’s Marisol Ruiz, the younger sister of Javier Ruiz, a shortstop he scouted out of a Miami high school back in 2013, who blew out his knee two years into the minors and now coaches little league back in his hometown. The last time he saw her, she was 19, waiting for Javier after practice, pigtails and a backpack covered in stickers, too shy to say anything more than “hi” when he waved. Now she’s 48, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, a tattoo of a baseball sewn into the soft skin of her wrist, her smile sharp and familiar.
She wipes her hand on her jeans, leans across the bar, and her forearm brushes his when she holds out a hand to shake. The contact is light, electric, and he feels his ears go warm, a feeling he hasn’t had in decades. “Elias Voss,” she says, and her voice is low, smoky, the sound of it settling soft in his chest. “Javier told me I might see you through here eventually. Said you still drive the same beat-up truck, still drink the same cheap lager.”
He nods, too flustered to come up with a witty retort, and she turns to pour his beer, her shoulder shifting under her cutoff flannel. He tells himself to stop staring, that this is Javier’s little sister, that he’s crossing a line just looking at her like that, that he should finish his beer and leave, drive to the motel he booked 30 minutes up the highway like he planned. But when she sets the beer down in front of him, condensation dripping down the side onto his calloused fingers, she doesn’t pull her hand away right away, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle for half a second before she steps back.
They talk for two hours. He tells her about the prospects he saw that day, the kid from Georgia who throws a curveball that drops off a table so sharp even the umpires flinch, the shortstop from Puerto Rico who hits every pitch to the opposite field like he’s been practicing it since he could walk. She tells him she’s been running the bar part time for her dad while she finishes her nursing degree, that she’s specializing in pediatric oncology, that Javier’s 7-year-old son just made his first all-star team. Every time she leans in to hear him over the jukebox, her knee brushes his under the bar, the denim of her jeans soft against his, and he doesn’t shift away. Every time she laughs at one of his dumb baseball jokes, her eyes crinkle at the corners, and he finds himself leaning in too, like he’s chasing the sound.
He knows he should leave. He knows this is the kind of thing he’s spent four years running from, that if Lila was here she’d roll her eyes and tell him to stop being an idiot, that he deserves to stop being lonely. The conflict sits tight in his chest, half disgust at himself for even thinking about kissing her, half warm, unnameable desire that he hasn’t felt since the first time he asked Lila out back in college.
Her shift ends at 10, and he offers to walk her to her car, the parking lot strung with half-dead fairy lights, the air cool enough that he can see his breath when he exhales. She stops halfway across the lot, turns to him, and reaches up to flip the collar of his windbreaker down, it had been flipped up since he left the bleachers that morning. Her hand rests on the side of his neck for a beat, her palm warm against his cool skin, and she doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t pull away either.
He kisses her slow, no rush, no pressure, the taste of mango seltzer and mint on her lips, her hand curling into the front of his windbreaker to pull him closer. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal. It feels like breathing again, like the first warm day after a long winter, like the crack of a bat hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth.
When they pull away, she laughs, soft, and tucks a strand of hair that fell out of her braid behind her ear. She asks him if he wants to get breakfast at the diner down the street tomorrow morning, before he drives up to the next showcase in Daytona. He says yes, no hesitation, no overthinking, no excuses.
He stands in the parking lot and watches her taillights fade down the street, the ghost of her kiss still on his lips, his palm still tingling where her hand rested on his chest before she got in her car. He pulls out his phone, finds the confirmation email for the 6 a.m. check-in at the highway motel he’d booked three weeks prior, and hits cancel.
