Javi Mendez, 53, has spent the last 12 years avoiding the small Ohio town’s annual Fourth of July cookout like it’s a pitcher with a 7.2 ERA and a terrible attitude. As a minor league baseball scout, he’s got a good excuse most years—he’s usually on the road, crisscrossing Indiana and Kentucky in his beat-up 2008 F-150, eating gas station beef jerky and scribbling scouting reports on a frayed spiral notebook. This year, though, his 19-year-old niece is visiting from Chicago, and she’d begged him to go, said she wanted to try the famous town smoked brisket and watch the fireworks. He’d caved, obviously. He’s never been able to say no to that kid.
He’s leaning against the beer cooler, half-empty can of Pabst in his hand, pretending to scroll through his phone to avoid making eye contact with his ex-wife, who’s manning the dessert table 20 feet away, when he feels a light tap on his shoulder. He turns, and is met with the kind of smile that makes his chest feel tight, like he just ran up three flights of stairs. The woman in front of him is wearing a sage green sundress that hits just above her knees, chipped mint green nail polish, and there’s a faint smudge of potting soil on her left forearm. He recognizes her immediately, even though he’s only seen her once before, 18 years ago at his wedding: Lena, his ex-wife’s younger cousin.
His first instinct is to make an excuse and leave. He’s spent over a decade shutting out anyone related to his ex, convinced they all think he’s the bad guy, the boring workaholic who drove her away. But she’s holding out a paper plate stacked with brisket, burnt ends dripping with sauce, and he’s so hungry he can’t think straight. He takes it, mumbles a thanks, and expects her to leave. She doesn’t. She leans against the cooler next to him, close enough that he can smell her sunscreen, coconut and jasmine, not the cloying artificial vanilla his ex used to douse herself in.
“Recognized the scar on your eyebrow,” she says, nodding at the thin white line above his left eye, the one he got when a line drive hit him in the face during a college game. “Saw it in my cousin’s old wedding photos a few months back. Asked around town, found out you still live here.” She teases him about the F-150, says she saw it parked outside his house last week when she was driving to her plant nursery on the edge of town. He blinks, surprised. He had no idea she’d moved back.
He’s wary at first, waiting for the inevitable lecture about how he should reach out to his ex, how they were always good together. It never comes. Instead, she tells him his ex got divorced last year, that the football coach she left him for cheated on her with a teacher from the same school. “I never liked him,” she says, and her tone is so genuine he almost laughs. “Thought you were way too good for her, even back when I was 20 and didn’t know jack about relationships.”
A kid with a glow stick comes barrelling past, and she steps closer to him to avoid getting knocked over, her hip brushing his. The contact is light, accidental, but it sends a jolt up his spine. He looks down at her, and she’s already looking up at him, dark eyes soft, not pitying, not judgmental. He realizes he hasn’t had a conversation this easy with anyone, let alone a woman, in years. He’s spent so long wallowing in his grudge, so convinced everyone in this town is on his ex’s side, that he missed the fact there were people here who didn’t care about that old drama.
The first firework goes off overhead, red and gold, painting the whole field in warm light. The crowd cheers, and more people press into the small open space, so close that their shoulders are pressed fully together now, the thin cotton of his button-down doing nothing to block the heat of her skin. She tells him she’s been asking about him for months, that she was scared to reach out because she thought he hated everyone tied to his ex. He admits he’s been an idiot, holding onto a grudge so long he forgot how to just talk to people, how to let himself have a good time.
She tilts her head up, and he can see the reflection of the fireworks in her eyes. He leans in, slow, gives her plenty of time to pull away, and when she doesn’t, he kisses her. It’s soft, slow, no one notices because everyone’s staring up at the sky, oohing and aahing at a burst of blue sparks. She tastes like cherry seltzer and the peppermint candy she’d been sucking on earlier, and when she pulls back she’s smiling, the kind of smile that makes his ears go hot.
When the fireworks end, the crowd starts dispersing, people packing up coolers and herding kids back to their cars. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and asks him if he wants to come back to her nursery. She’s got a batch of homemade peach ice cream in her freezer, she says, and her back porch has a perfect view of the rest of the neighborhood fireworks people set off late into the night. He doesn’t even hesitate, says yes before she finishes the sentence. They walk to her pickup truck, and when she opens the passenger door for him, he spots a faded sticker for the minor league team he scouts for stuck to her back window.
