Rafe Marquez, 52, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up silver Ford F-150, his scouting notebook stuffed in the center console next to a pack of spearmint gum and a half-empty bottle of ibuprofen. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’s shut down every chance at casual connection since his wife left him seven years prior, bailing on their small west Texas rental for a high school football coach who owned a boat and didn’t work 200 days a year on the road. He’d written off small town bars and pretty strangers and anything that smelled like unnecessary drama entirely, until he pulled into Luling last week for a junior college tournament, on the hunt for a left-handed pitcher with a 94 mph fastball and a terrible habit of swinging at every first pitch.
The bar off Main Street smelled like fried pickles and sour mash bourbon, the jukebox spitting out old George Strait deep cuts loud enough to drown out the row of college kids playing darts in the back. Rafe sat at the far end of the bar, his notebook open to the pitcher’s scouting report, a cold Shiner Bock sweating through the paper coaster under it, when she sat down two stools over. He recognized her immediately—Lila, the wife of the regional league GM, the same guy who’d threatened to blacklist Rafe from every scouting gig in the southwest three years prior, after Rafe called him out for padding top prospect stats to land a better deal with the MLB farm system. The GM had made it very clear to every scout in the circuit that Lila was off-limits, no talking, no eye contact, nothing.
The bartender was busy pulling shots for a bachelorette party up front, so Lila leaned across the empty stool between them to grab a stack of napkins next to Rafe’s elbow, her bare forearm brushing his knuckle as she reached. Her skin was warm, smelled like cedar and vanilla, and she smiled when she pulled back, wiping a smudge of stadium hot dog mustard off the side of her thumb. “You’re the scout that’s been camped behind home plate all week, right?” she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it over the jukebox. “I saw you taking notes on the backup catcher yesterday, not just the lefty everyone’s here for. Most guys don’t bother with the backups.”
He didn’t mean to engage, but he found himself talking anyway, telling her about the catcher’s 1.9 second pop time to second base, how most scouts write off guys under six feet even if they’re faster and smarter than the taller prospects. She leaned in as he talked, shifting one stool closer when a group of tournament players stumbled past the bar, her shoulder pressing against his for half a second when one of them knocked into her chair. Her knee brushed his under the bar when she laughed at his story about the lefty’s terrible walk-up song—some 2010s pop track he’d apparently stolen from his little sister—and he felt something unclench in his chest, something he hadn’t felt since before his ex packed her bags.
He fought it at first, every alarm in his head blaring that this was a terrible idea, that he’d lose his job, that small town drama would follow him down every highway for the next year. But Lila didn’t play games. She told him the GM had been cheating on her with the team’s admin for six months, that she’d filed for divorce two weeks prior, that she’d just been waiting for the tournament to end to call him out on it publicly. She laced her fingers through his on the bar top right as the GM walked through the front door, holding their joined hands up so he could see them, smiling sharp and unapologetic when the guy’s face turned bright red and he stormed right back out.
Rafe didn’t care about the blacklist threat anymore. He closed his scouting notebook, left enough cash on the bar to cover both their drinks, and followed her out into the warm Texas night, crickets chirping loud in the oak trees lining the street, the distant hum of the stadium lights still buzzing a few blocks over. She stopped him before he could reach for the truck door, pressing a slow, soft kiss to his jaw, her hand fisted lightly in the front of his worn scout’s jacket, and said she’d always wanted to drive through the Hill Country, that she didn’t have any plans for the next two weeks, that she’d even help him take notes if he wanted.
He tucks his scouting notebook into his jacket pocket, unlocks the passenger door for her, and lets the cool night air wash over the part of him he thought he’d buried for good.
