Javier Ruiz, 52, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up 2019 F-150, his glove compartment stuffed with radar gun printouts, sunflower seed shells, and half-empty packs of spearmint gum. His biggest flaw, one he’s avoided admitting even to himself since his wife walked out without a note eight years prior, is that he’s built walls thick enough to stop a 95 mph fastball, convinced any casual connection will only end in more quiet disappointment. He stops at Mack’s Tap, the cinder-block dive off Highway 1 outside Augusta, every third week of March, right when the low-A GreenJackets open their spring training slate, and he never stays longer than two beers.
This year is different, at first only in the small ways. The neon Pabst sign above the bar is new, the fried pickle basket comes with a spicy ranch dip instead of the bland dill he’s used to, and the bartender wiping down the counter isn’t Mack, who retired last fall. Her name is Lena, 48, her left wrist wrapped in a faded Georgia Bulldogs sweatband, a tiny silver scar snaking across her right knuckle from when she’d stripped a beer tap line two weeks prior and nicked herself on a rusted fitting. When she sets his second Budweiser down on the worn coaster in front of him, her forearm brushes his, the soft skin warm against the hair on his arm, and she holds eye contact a full beat longer than necessary, like she’s trying to place a face she’s seen before.
He doesn’t volunteer any information at first, just nods, stares at the rain lashing the plate glass windows, the parking lot turning to mud under the streetlights. He’s halfway through his beer when she leans against the counter across from him, arms crossed, and asks if he’s the scout Mack used to ramble about, the one who could tell a kid’s ceiling after three swings of the bat. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he doesn’t use much anymore, and admits that’s him, that he’s been coming here 12 years running. They talk for an hour, the bar empty now save for the two of them, the jukebox switched off, the only sounds the hum of the walk-in cooler and the patter of rain on the roof. He tells her about the 19-year-old shortstop he watched that afternoon, quick as a cat, arm strong enough to throw out a runner from deep in the hole, but so nervous at the plate he swings at every pitch in the dirt. She tells him about her 20-year-old son, who played shortstop in high school before he enlisted in the Army, stationed at Fort Stewart now, who sends her postcards from every base he visits.
When he reaches for his half-empty peanut bowl at the same time she does to refill it, their fingers brush, and he flinches like he’s been burned. His hands are calloused, rough from 20 years of gripping radar guns, folding scouting notebooks, changing flat tires on backcountry dirt roads. Hers are softer, but there’s grit under her fingernails from fixing the bar’s back porch earlier that day, and he can smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the faint, sweet scent of the menthol cigarette she snuck out back 10 minutes prior. He’s torn, halfway between leaning in and grabbing his keys to bolt, disgusted with himself for even entertaining the thought of anything more than small talk. He never gets involved with people in the towns he passes through, never lets anyone get close enough to ask questions about the empty passenger seat, the photo of his ex-wife he keeps tucked in the back of his notebook. She’s told every one of her friends she won’t date anyone who isn’t local, won’t waste her time on something that’s only going to leave her alone again when the road calls.
The power flickers once, twice, then cuts out entirely, the bar plunged into dark save for the faint glow of the streetlight through the rain-streaked windows. She laughs, soft, and ducks under the bar to grab the pack of beeswax candles she keeps stashed next to the first aid kit, lighting three of them and setting them down on the counter between them. The light gilds the edges of her hair, turns the beer in his bottle amber, and when she walks around the bar to sit next to him, their knees brush under the counter, neither of them moves away. She says she knows he’s leaving for Greensboro in two days, that neither of them is looking for a ring or a weekend trip or anything that requires a long-term commitment, that sometimes it’s enough to just sit with someone who gets what it feels like to spend most of your days missing someone you don’t have anymore.
He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t run down the list of reasons this is a bad idea, doesn’t remind himself of the walls he spent eight years building. He reaches over, brushes a stray strand of blonde hair off her forehead, his thumb grazing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leans into the touch, smiling. Outside, the rain slowed to a soft drumming against the fogged windowpanes, and for the first time in almost a decade, he didn’t feel the urge to run.
