Rafe Mendez, 59, has spent 22 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 80,000 miles a year in a beat-up Ford F-150, crumpled scout notebooks stacked on his passenger seat, a faded photo of his late wife tucked in the visor. His biggest flaw, the one his kid sister teases him about every Thanksgiving, is that he’s turned down every date, every casual advance, every warm smile from a woman for 8 years, convinced even a single coffee would be a betrayal of the woman he was married to for 28 years. He’s in rural Ohio on a rainy Tuesday, fresh off scouting a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher with a 94 mph fastball and a terrible habit of bouncing curveballs in the dirt with runners on base, and he’s settled into a cracked vinyl stool at the only bar in town, nursing a 10-year bourbon that burns warm going down, listening to the rain hammer the tin roof above the bar.
The space reeks of fried pickles and stale old beer, the jukebox spitting out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts that crackle a little around the edges, when the door slams open, bringing in a gust of rain-wet air and the soft, heady scent of lavender. She sits two stools down, sheds a bright yellow raincoat to reveal a heathered gray sweater and jeans caked with mud from the ballfield bleachers, orders a glass of dry pinot noir, and when she shifts to cross her legs, her knee brushes his. He freezes for half a second, then looks up, and she’s already watching him, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I saw you at the game,” she says, nodding at the scout notebook emblazoned with the Cincinnati Reds logo sitting on the bar next to his glass. “You scribbled really fast when Javi threw that wild pitch in the seventh.”
Rafe’s jaw tightens. Fraternizing with a player’s family is against unwritten league rules, the kind that get you labeled a creep, or a recruiter playing favorites, and he’s worked too long to blow his reputation over a pretty woman with a lavender perfume. He mumbles a noncommittal response, takes a long sip of bourbon, tries to pretend he’s focused on the rain streaking the smudged window behind the bar. She doesn’t push. She sips her wine, laughs loud when the bartender teases her about yelling so loud at the game she scared the 10-year-old bat boy sitting next to her, and when she passes him the bowl of salted peanuts the bartender set down between them, her fingers brush his. The contact is tiny, accidental, but it sends a jolt up his arm, the kind of spark he hasn’t felt since his wife was alive, and he fumbles the peanut he was grabbing, drops it on the sticky bar top.
She snorts, not mean, just amused, and leans in a little, her shoulder now inches from his, the warmth of her arm radiating through the thin fabric of his worn flannel shirt. “Relax,” she says, her voice low enough only he can hear it over the Cash song playing. “Javi already has a full ride to Ohio State. We’re not here begging for a minor league contract. I’m Clara, by the way. His mom.” She holds out a hand, calloused at the fingertips from planting peonies and sunflowers in the flower shop she owns, he finds out ten minutes later, when he finally stops being an idiot and takes her hand, when he stops worrying about rules and reputation and listens to her talk about the shop, about Javi’s obsession with old Nintendo 64 games, about how she lost her husband three years ago to a sudden heart attack, how she still sleeps on her side of the bed because his side still smells a little like his pine shaving aftershave.
He tells her about his wife, about the ovarian cancer that took her fast, four months from diagnosis to the end, about how he threw himself into scouting because being on the road meant he didn’t have to sit in an empty, quiet house all night, about how his sister keeps setting him up with her friends from book club and he keeps bailing last minute with a fake work emergency. She nods, like she gets it, no pity in her eyes, just quiet understanding, and when she touches his wrist lightly, her thumb brushing the thin scar he got from falling off a dirt bike when he was 12, he doesn’t flinch. “You don’t have to be loyal to a ghost,” she says, soft, and it’s the first time anyone’s ever put it that way, the first time it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to want to feel something other than grief.
The rain slows to a soft drizzle by 10, the bartender starts wiping down the glasses for closing, and Clara slides off her stool, slings her raincoat over her arm. “I live three blocks away,” she says, tilting her head at him, a playful glint in her eye. “I have a bottle of 12-year bourbon my brother gave me for Christmas, and a whole album of Javi’s little league photos, if you want to do more scouting.” Rafe hesitates for half a second, glances at the notebook on the bar, at his truck parked out front where the photo of his wife sits tucked in the visor, then closes the notebook, tucks it into the inner pocket of his jacket, slides off his stool. He holds the door open for her when they step out onto the wet sidewalk, and when she leans into him a little to avoid a deep puddle, his hand rests light on the small of her back, warm through the thin fabric of her sweater, and he doesn’t pull away.
