Javier “Jay” Ruiz, 53, has scouted left-handed pitching prospects for the Houston Astros’ low-A affiliate for 17 years, and he’s got a non-negotiable rule he’s never broken: no messing around with anyone who knows his ex-wife Lila. It’s not that he’s still hung up on her—they split 11 years prior, when she got tired of him being on the road 300 days a year, left him for a high school football coach who wore pleated khakis and collected commemorative Super Bowl shot glasses. It’s that Lila has a mouth like a rusted chainsaw, and any drama would get back to his mom in San Antonio before the end of the week, and he doesn’t need that noise. He’s stubborn to a fault, has spent the last decade sleeping in his beat-up 2017 F-150 half the time rather than signing a lease that would tie him down, keeps a dog-eared copy of *Blood Meridian* in his center console that he’s read 12 times. He’s at the tiny West Texas town of Muleshoe’s Fourth of July fair because he watched a 19-year-old southpaw throw 94 mph with a slider that drops off a table that afternoon, and he’s rewarding himself with a cold Shiner Bock and a basket of fried okra, leaning against a splintered wooden fence away from the crowd of screaming kids and bored parents.
He spots her across the lot first. Maeve Carter, 48, Lila’s first cousin, who moved to town three months prior to run the public library after her own divorce up in Amarillo. Lila texted him the day Maeve’s moving truck pulled into town, all caps: STAY AWAY FROM HER, SHE’S FAMILY. He’d rolled his eyes, deleted the text, and had gone out of his way to avoid the library block ever since, even when he needed to print out scouting reports and the gas station printer was broken. But now she’s walking toward him, holding a corn dog in one hand and a neon pink snow cone in the other, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1980s Willie Nelson tour t-shirt, her sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, freckles dusted across her nose from the unforgiving West Texas sun. She’s grinning, like she’s been looking for him specifically.
“You’re Jay, right?” She stops three feet away, close enough that he can smell the coconut sunscreen she’s wearing, mixed with the cherry syrup dripping off her snow cone and the charcoal smoke from the nearby brisket grill. He nods, takes a slow sip of his beer, doesn’t say anything. He’s fighting the stupid, instinctual urge to stare at her legs, which are tanned and toned, a small silvery scar on her left knee from what he later learns was a dirt bike accident when she was 16. “Lila’s told me all about you. None of it good, for the record.” She laughs, and it’s a low, warm sound, nothing like the shrill cackle Lila had when she found something mean funny. “I figured she’d warned you off me, too. She thinks we’ll both make terrible life choices if we’re left in the same room.”
He finds himself laughing too, pushes off the fence, gestures to the empty picnic table a few feet away. She sits down across from him, passes him half her corn dog when he mentions he hasn’t eaten since the 10 a.m. game. Their fingers brush when he takes it, his calloused from decades of gripping baseball bats and turning wrenches on his old truck, hers soft from 20 years of turning library book pages, a small rough callus on her index finger from holding pens for hours at a time. He feels a jolt go up his arm, pretends it’s just the shock of the cold beer he’d just sipped. They talk for 45 minutes, about the terrible 1-8 local high school football team, about the fact that the library only has three copies of *Blood Meridian*, about the kid he scouted that afternoon who has a real shot at making the big leagues. Their knees keep touching under the table, neither of them moves away. He doesn’t mention Lila once. He doesn’t mention his stupid rule, either.
The first firework goes off right as the sun dips below the flat West Texas horizon, painting the sky neon red and deep purple. The crowd cheers, a group of kids running with glow sticks slams into Maeve’s shoulder. She stumbles forward, right into his chest, and he catches her, his hands wrapping around her waist to steady her. She’s lighter than he expected, her breath hot against his neck, her hands resting on his shoulders to keep her balance. For a second, neither of them moves. He can hear the boom of the fireworks echoing off the empty sorghum fields surrounding the town, feel the steady thud of her heart against his, taste the cherry syrup from her snow cone on her breath when she tilts her head up to look at him. Her eyes are dark, bright from the flashing fireworks, no trace of hesitation in them.
He doesn’t overthink it. He leans down, kisses her, slow, the taste of cherry and faint mint of her gum mixing with the Shiner on his tongue. The crowd cheers louder, another gold firework explodes overhead, but he doesn’t notice any of it. When they pull apart, she’s grinning, her cheeks pink, her braid half fallen loose. “I was wondering how long it would take you to stop being a coward,” she says, and he snorts, tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. He texts Lila that night, when he’s dropping Maeve off at her small bungalow on the edge of town, a single photo of him and Maeve grinning in front of the fireworks, no caption. He blocks her number ten seconds later, before she can fire off a rage text. The next morning, he shows up at the library at 9 a.m. sharp, holding two iced coffees and a box of glazed donuts from the local bakery. He leans against the circulation desk, sipping his coffee, as she reshelves a stack of worn western paperbacks, and doesn’t take his eyes off her the entire time.
