Rafe Mendoza, 53, has spent the last seven years living out of the dented passenger seat of his F150, logging 22,000 miles a year as a Midwest League minor league scout. His only consistent companions are a Yeti cooler stocked with bourbon minis and summer sausage, a dog-eared binder of prospect notes, and the ghost of his wife Elaina, who’d died in a car crash on her way to his last college coaching game before he took the scouting gig. His biggest flaw? He’d convinced himself any connection not tied to a 90 mph fastball or a 12-6 curveball was a waste of time, a betrayal of the life he’d lost.
He pulls into the gravel lot of The Split Finger, a dive bar off I-69 outside Bloomington, at 8:17 p.m. on a muggy Tuesday, just after wrapping a scouting visit for 18-year-old lefty Javi Ruiz, who’d thrown a no-hitter that afternoon against the regional rival. The air smells like cut grass and fried pickles when he walks in, the jukebox spitting out Travis Tritt deep cuts, the bar top sticky with spilled seltzer and old beer. He slides onto a stool at the far end, orders bourbon on the rocks, and pulls out his notebook to jot final notes on Javi’s mechanics.
He’s halfway through a sentence about Javi’s inconsistent release point when a woman slides onto the stool two spots over, the hem of her cutoff jeans brushing the leg of his work boots. He glances up, recognizes her immediately: she’d been standing behind the backstop all game, holding a beat-up Canon, yelling so loud her voice had gone hoarse by the seventh inning. She meets his eye, smirks, and nods at the scout logo stitched onto the front of his faded ball cap. “You’re the guy who was scribbling so hard I thought your pen was gonna break,” she says, waving the bartender over for a ranch water.
He huffs a laugh, tucks the notebook into his back pocket. “Guy’s got a future. Didn’t wanna miss a detail.” She leans forward to grab her drink when the bartender slides it over, her sun-warmed forearm brushing his, the faint scar on her wrist catching the neon light above the bar. She says her name is Lena, she’s Javi’s mom, she’s been driving him to practices and games since he was 8, and she’s just glad he’s old enough now that she doesn’t have to bring a cooler of Capri Suns and fruit snacks to every matchup.
When a group of loud college kids piles into the bar and claims the last empty stools at the end, she moves to the seat right next to him, their knees brushing under the bar. He can smell coconut shampoo and the sharp lime of her drink, can hear the faint rattle of her silver hoop earrings when she laughs at his story about a prospect last year who’d tried to throw a fastball while wearing cowboy boots mid-game. He doesn’t realize he’s been talking for an hour until his phone buzzes with a reminder to send his notes to the front office by midnight.
The guilt hits him hard, fast, like a fastball to the ribs. He’s here for work. He’s talking to a prospect’s mom, for Christ’s sake, not even two hours after he told Javi he’d push hard for a rookie league offer. He feels like a creep, like he’s taking advantage, like Elaina is somewhere rolling her eyes at him for being stupid enough to mix business and whatever this is. He pulls his hand back when it brushes hers on the bar top, tenses his jaw, makes a move to grab his wallet.
Lena doesn’t let him leave. She rests her hand on his forearm, light, not pushy, holds his gaze steady so he can’t look away. “Javi signed his D1 letter of intent three weeks ago,” she says, soft enough only he can hear. “I know you think this is crossing some line, but it’s not. I saw you sitting in the stands alone before the game, eating a gas station burrito, looking like you haven’t smiled for fun in years. I’ve been divorced three years. I don’t care about the optics. I care that you’re the first person who’s talked to me about something other than my son’s ERA in six months.”
He stares at her for a long minute, the buzz of the bar fading out around him, the weight of seven years of self-imposed isolation lifting just a little. He doesn’t pull away when she leans in, her breath fanning warm against his cheek, when her hand slides down his arm to rest on his thigh, light, testing. He tastes lime and salt when she kisses him, slow, right there at the end of the bar, the bartender pretending not to look, the college kids yelling over a game of darts.
He pays their tab ten minutes later, slings his notebook bag over his shoulder, walks her out to the parking lot. The crickets are loud in the grass along the edge of the lot, the streetlight casting gold over the hood of his truck. She stops halfway between the bar and the passenger door, turns to him, laces her fingers through his, calloused from years of pitching batting practice to her son. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t reach for the excuse of work or his dead wife to run away. He just leans down and kisses her again, the cool summer air biting at the back of his neck, the distant rumble of a semi passing on the highway fading into the dark.
