Ronan O’Malley, 53, minor league baseball scout with a scar slicing through his left eyebrow from a college dugout brawl and a habit of ghosting anyone who tries to set him up on dates, leaned against the gnarled oak at the edge of the league’s annual summer beer fest. He’d been avoiding his new GM for 45 minutes straight, the guy’s nasally voice carrying across the riverfront park every time he bragged about turning the franchise around by cutting scouting budgets. Ronan’s cold hazy IPA sweated through the paper koozie in his hand, sticky on his calloused palm, and he was half considering ditching the whole event when she walked over.
Elara was the GM’s wife, six months into a marriage that already looked like it was held together by nothing but holiday cards and forced smiles. She was barefoot, strappy sandals dangling from one hand, the heel snapped clean off, and her faded terracotta linen sundress had a grass stain on the hem from where she’d tripped earlier. “You got a bottle opener?” she asked, nodding at the unopened hard seltzer in her other hand, no preamble, no fake pleasantry. Her voice was rough, like she smoked a pack a day when no one was watching, and she had chipped navy nail polish and a thin, silvery scar snaking up her left wrist from a childhood horseback riding wreck.
He dug the opener off his keychain, passed it over, and their fingers brushed. The contact was light, over in half a second, but Ronan felt it zing up his arm, warm and sharp, like the static shock you get from grabbing a metal door handle in the dry winter air. He’d not felt anything like that since his ex-wife left him eight years prior, when she’d decided small town North Carolina was too boring and moved back to Seattle with a guy who sold SaaS. He’d written off any kind of connection after that, convinced it was all just a setup for heartbreak, and here he was, sitting on the warm grass next to his boss’s wife, his throat tight.
She sat down beside him, knees almost touching, the gap between them so small he could smell coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet tang of the mango seltzer she sipped. “I read your scouting report on that shortstop from Asheville,” she said, like they were old friends, no awkward small talk, and Ronan’s eyebrows shot up. The GM hadn’t even bothered to read the report, had just shot him an email saying the kid was too slow, his 40-yard dash time a tenth of a second off the arbitrary mark the league was pushing now. “You’re right about the grit. Played third base in D1 softball for three years. Coaches always cared more about how fast you could run than how many line drives you could catch barehanded in the rain.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t pulled out in months, and she grinned back, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Every few seconds she’d glance down at his mouth when he talked, then dart her eyes back up to his, like she was embarrassed to be caught looking, and Ronan’s chest felt tight, equal parts desire and cold, sharp guilt. This was his boss’s wife. If anyone saw them sitting this close, laughing like they had inside jokes, he could lose the job he’d held for 21 years, the job that was the only stable thing he had left. He should stand up, make an excuse, walk away. He couldn’t make his legs move.
A group of league officials trundled past, loud and drunk, and she leaned in, shoulder pressing firm against his, breath warm on his ear, like she was telling him a secret no one else could hear. “He doesn’t even know I played softball,” she murmured, and Ronan could smell mint gum on her breath, feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of his team polo. “Thinks sports are just a way to line his pockets. Can’t tell a slider from a curveball if it hit him in the face.” She pulled back, and her hand brushed his forearm when she laughed at his joke about the GM’s terrible golf swing, fingers light on the sun-warmed skin.
She pulled her phone out of her dress pocket, rolled her eyes, and turned the screen to show him. It was a text from the GM, sent two minutes prior: Leaving early with the guys. Don’t wait up. The attached photo was of a group of men piled into a limo, holding neon shots at a strip club across town. “I was gonna drive myself home, but I had two seltzers,” she said, tucking her phone back, like she was asking a favor, not propositioning him. “You live near the used bookstore on Main, right? I can walk the rest of the way from your place if you give me a ride.”
Ronan nodded, no hesitation, no overthinking it, no worrying about the job or the gossip or the grudge he’d held against the world for eight years. He tossed his half-empty beer can in the trash, and they slipped out the back of the park, no one noticing them, the sound of the live band and the laughing crowd fading behind them. He opened the passenger door of his beat-up 2012 F150 for her, and she climbed in, setting her broken sandals on the floorboard, her hand resting on the center console three inches from his. He turned the key, and Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* came on the old radio, and she hummed along, quiet, off-key.
Halfway to Main Street, she slid her hand over his, lacing their fingers together, her palm warm and calloused at the edges from swinging a bat for all those years. He didn’t pull away.
