Rudy Galvan, 53, has scouted high school and independent league baseball across south Texas for 22 years, and he’s got two non-negotiable rules: never drink more than two beers after a game, and never fraternize with a prospect’s family. The first rule’s easy to stick to most nights, even when the dive bars off the I-35 frontage road serve Shiner Bock in frosty mugs cold enough to make his old college pitching ache throb. The second rule’s held strong ever since his ex-wife left him 12 years back, furious that he’d missed their 10th anniversary to watch a 17-year-old shortstop hit three home runs in a dust storm outside Laredo. He’s rigid to a fault, avoids casual connections like they’re a pulled hamstring that’ll bench him for the season, and that’s worked just fine for him.
He’s perched on a scuffed vinyl bar stool in a spot outside New Braunfels, half done with his second beer, flipping through crumpled scouting notes on the left-handed pitcher he watched throw 94 mph that afternoon, when the door swings open and the humid July air rolls in, thick with the smell of cut grass and diesel. He doesn’t look up until she slides onto the stool two spots down, the hem of her faded denim jeans brushing the peanut shell-crusted floor as she shifts to get comfortable. She orders a whiskey sour, no cherry, and when the bartender slides the glass across the polished oak, she reaches for it at the exact same time Rudy grabs a fresh napkin to wipe the sweat off his notebook. Their knuckles brush. He notices her hands are calloused at the pads, pale pink nail polish chipped at the edges, a faint smudge of horse manure on her wrist that she tries to rub off with her thumb when she catches him looking.
She holds his eye contact for three full beats, longer than polite, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I saw you at the game today. Had your little clipboard, scribbling the whole time Javi was on the mound.” Javi is the pitcher, Rudy realizes, the kid who struck out 11 batters in six innings. He tenses, already mentally kicking himself for breaking the second rule before he even said two words. He nods, tight, and goes back to his notes, but he can feel her staring at the side of his face, can smell the mix of lavender laundry detergent, citrus perfume, and faint horse sweat clinging to her shirt.
She moves one stool closer, then another, until their knees are almost touching under the bar. She tells him she’s Javi’s stepmom, that his biological dad was supposed to come to the game but bailed for an oil rig shift in Oklahoma, hasn’t called her in three weeks. She runs a 12-stall horse barn on the edge of town, works 60 hour weeks so Javi can afford pitching lessons without his dad’s money. Rudy finds himself talking before he can stop, telling her about the knee injury that ended his own minor league career when he was 24, about the time he scouted a kid in the Rio Grande Valley who had to use a taped-up baseball glove his older brother had used 10 years prior, about how he hasn’t taken a day off in four years. He’s disgusted with himself, halfway, knows the league could fine him or fire him if anyone found out he was even having a casual conversation with a prospect’s family, knows it looks bad, knows he’s breaking the rule he carved into stone after his divorce. But he hasn’t had anyone look at him like she does, like he’s more than just a guy with a clipboard and a faded team polo, in longer than he can remember.
The jukebox switches to a slow George Strait track, the speaker crackling a little at the high notes, and she leans in, her mouth inches from his ear, her breath warm against his jaw. “I got a little cabin 20 minutes west of town, down a dirt road no one drives on after dark. No one will see us if you come.” He freezes, his hand wrapped around his beer mug so tight his knuckles go white. He thinks about the rulebook tucked in his truck’s glove compartment, about the scouting report for Javi that’s due at the home office next Monday, about how every time he’s let someone get close to him in the last 12 years he’s ended up regretting it. He hesitates for 10 full seconds, then he flags down the bartender, pays both their tabs, shoves his notebook in the inner pocket of his polo.
They walk out into the parking lot, the crickets humming so loud they almost drown out the distant sound of a train horn down the tracks. She unlocks her beat-up silver Ford F150, the tailgate dented where Javi backed into it with his lawnmower last month, and Rudy pauses by his own truck first, tucking his scouting bag under the seat and locking the doors twice, just to be sure. She’s leaning against the driver’s side door of her truck, watching him, when he walks over, and when he’s a foot away she rests her hand on the small of his back, warm through the thin cotton of his shirt, as he reaches for the passenger side handle.
