Moe Sorrentino, 59, minor league scout for the Midwest League’s Lansing Lugnuts, slumps into a cracked vinyl booth at the Scorched Palm, a dented tiki bar 12 miles outside Fort Pierce. He’s just come from a 12-inning rookie league game, his jeans stiff with dugout dust, the brim of his faded Lugnuts cap crumpled where he’d squeezed it during a walk-off home run he’d traveled 800 miles to see. His truck’s AC cut out 20 miles back, and the Florida March heat has soaked through his undershirt, so he orders a cold draft and slumps back, not planning to stay longer than 20 minutes. For four years, since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, he’s avoided any situation that could lead to small talk with a woman, convinced even casual flirting is a betrayal of the 32 years they spent together. It’s easier to drive 30,000 miles a year scouting high school and college players, sleep in empty Airbnb rentals, and only talk to people about batting averages and pitch speed.
He’s halfway through his beer when she slides into the booth across from him, no invitation, just a wide grin and a half-empty margarita in her hand. He recognizes her before she speaks: Elena Marquez, stepmom of Javi Rios, the shortstop he’d drafted out of a Miami high school back in 2018, the best prospect he’d ever signed. Javi just got called up to Double A earlier that week, she says, her silver bob falling into her face when she leans forward to tap the Lugnuts logo on his cap. She’d been supposed to meet a friend to celebrate, but the friend’s kid got appendicitis and bailed at the last minute, and she’d spotted him sitting alone when she was debating driving back to her hotel.
He tenses at first, his knee jerking back when her bare leg brushes his under the table, denim cutoffs rough against his work pants. Then he relaxes, lets his knee stay where it is, an inch from hers. She smells like coconut sunscreen and tequila, the jukebox in the corner playing Tom Petty low enough that they don’t have to yell to hear each other. She tells him she’s a high school art teacher, 22 years on the job, planning to retire next year to drive cross country and paint national parks. She got divorced six months prior, after her husband Javi’s dad cheated on her with his paralegal. She laughs when she says she spent the entire settlement on a custom camper van, no regrets. She holds his gaze when she laughs, no quick look away, her dark brown eyes crinkled at the corners from decades of sun exposure, and he finds himself leaning forward, not even reaching for his phone to check scout updates like he usually does every 10 minutes. When she leans across the table to grab the napkin holder, her forearm brushes his, and he can feel the faint raised scar on her wrist, the same scar she offhandedly mentions came from a pottery wheel accident when she was 22.
He knows this is the line he’s not supposed to cross. Javi still texts him every week for advice, still calls him “Coach” even though he hasn’t coached him in five years. Hitting on his stepmom feels like a violation of the unspoken rule between scouts and their players, like he’s breaking a trust he spent years building. On top of that, the guilt nags at the back of his throat, sharp as the lime he sucks on between sips of beer: Linda would hate that he’s even considering this, right? He pushes the thought away, remembers the last conversation they had, when she was in the hospice bed, her hand thin as paper in his, telling him to stop being a hermit once she was gone, to find someone who makes him laugh so hard he snorts, the way she used to.
Last call blares over the speakers, and the bartender flips half the neon signs off. Rain slams against the tin roof, so hard it drowns out the crickets chirping outside, the parking lot already flooding in shallow puddles. Elena twists the ring on her middle finger, leans forward so her knee is pressed fully against his now, no space between them. Her hotel is 10 minutes away, she says, and her rental car is parked right out front. He can crash on her couch, wait out the storm, no pressure, no expectations, just a dry place to sleep instead of driving his sweltering truck through the downpour.
He hesitates for exactly seven seconds, counts them off in his head, the same way he counts the time between a pitcher’s windup and the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt. He nods, grabs his cap off the table, tucks his scouting notebook into the back pocket of his jeans. When he holds the front door open for her, her hand brushes his as she steps past, and he laces their fingers together for three steps before he lets go, neither of them mentioning it. They run through the rain to her car, their shirts soaked through by the time they reach it, her shoulder pressed tight to his as she fumbles for her keys.
