Leo Marquez, 52, is a Kansas City Royals minor league scout who’s spent six weeks every summer on Cape Cod for the past decade, tracking college players in the Cape Cod League for draft eligibility. He’s got a scar slicing across his left knuckle from a 1998 dugout brawl, a faded Royals cap he’s worn since his own short-lived pitching career ended, and a self-imposed rule he’s never broken: no fraternizing with any former teammate’s family, no exceptions. He’s also not dated, not even so much as held a woman’s hand, since his wife died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, choosing to bury himself in stat sheets and 12-hour game days instead of confronting the hollow spot in his chest that never quite healed. He drives a beat-up 2016 Ford F-150 with a cracked windshield, stays in a $90 a week rental cottage with a lumpy mattress, and hits The Skipper, a weathered dive bar two blocks from the Chatham ballfield, every single night after the final out, where he orders the same Sam Adams draft, sits at the far end of the bar, and doesn’t talk to anyone unless they ask him about a player’s fastball velocity.
The first time he sees Clara Voss behind the bar, he almost drops his notebook. He’d recognize that crooked smile anywhere, the little scar above her left eyebrow from a college soccer injury, the way she tucks strands of dark blonde hair behind her ear when she’s concentrating. She’s Jake Voss’s ex-wife, his double-A teammate back in 1997, the woman all the guys used to whisper about in the locker room, the one Jake left for a cocktail waitress in Tulsa when their youngest kid was three. She wipes down the bar in front of him with a rag that smells like lemon and saltwater, sets his beer down so their forearms brush, and he can smell coconut shampoo on her hair, warm and sweet under the bar’s usual scent of fried clams and old beer. “Leo Marquez,” she says, like she’s been expecting him, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher around the edges, “Jake said you’d be rolling through here eventually. Still drinking that same crap beer?”
He freezes, his fingers curled around the cold mug, and mumbles a reply, his face hotter than it’s been in years. He’d always thought Clara was too good for Jake, back in the day, had even helped her change a flat tire on her Honda Civic once when Jake was passed out drunk in the team hotel, had never let himself look at her for too long, like that was a line he couldn’t uncross. For the next three weeks, he tries to keep his head down, avoids making eye contact when she leans over the bar to pass him napkins, flinches when her elbow brushes his when she’s grabbing a bottle off the shelf behind his seat. She teases him about it, calls him “grumpy scout” when he ignores her jokes, leaves a side of free fried clams on his napkin every night, even when he tells her he doesn’t need them. One night, she leans over him to adjust the jukebox behind his stool, her chest pressing lightly against his shoulder for half a second, and he can feel the heat of her through her faded flannel shirt, and when she pulls back she holds his gaze for two beats too long, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Relax, Marquez,” she says, quiet enough no one else can hear, “I don’t bite unless you ask nicely.”
He spends three nights lying awake in his lumpy rental bed after that, torn between a desire he hasn’t felt in a decade and the gut-deep guilt that’s been gnawing at him since he first saw her. It feels like a betrayal, like he’s stabbing Jake in the back, even though he hasn’t spoken to Jake in 12 years, even though he knows Jake cheated on Clara three times before he left, even though his wife would have called him an idiot for turning down a chance to stop being lonely. The last night of the league, a storm rolls in off the Atlantic, rain lashing against the bar’s windows, the final game canceled by noon. By 9 PM, the bar is empty except for the two of them, the jukebox playing old Tom Petty at a low hum, rain tapping so hard on the roof it drowns out the sound of the ocean a block away. She locks the front door, flips off half the neon signs, and brings a bottle of spiced rum and two plastic cups over to his stool, sitting down next to him so their knees brush under the bar.
She tells him she moved back to the Cape six months prior, after her youngest kid left for college, bought the bar from her dad who’d retired to Florida, had asked the regulars if Leo was coming that summer, had been waiting for him. She takes his left hand in hers, runs her thumb over the scar on his knuckle, and says she always thought he was the good one, the one who never hit on her when Jake was around, the one who didn’t laugh when Jake told the guys about his affairs. He admits he’s thought about her on and off for 26 years, that he felt guilty for even looking at her back then, that he feels guilty now. She laughs, soft, and leans in so her forehead is almost touching his, the smell of coconut shampoo and rum wrapping around him. “Jake hasn’t been my husband longer than he was,” she says, “and your wife would kick your ass for sitting here feeling sorry for yourself instead of letting someone be nice to you.” She kisses him then, slow, and it tastes like rum and salt and the peppermint lip balm she wears, her hand curling around the back of his neck, his coming to rest on her waist, no rush, no pressure, like they’ve got all the time in the world.
He drives her back to her cottage 10 minutes down the road, rain tapping against the truck’s windshield, her hand laced in his on the center console, the half-empty bottle of rum rolling around in the cup holder. The fog is thick off the ocean, the streetlights glowing gold through the mist, and when they pull up to her porch, she doesn’t let go of his hand when she turns off the truck. She asks him if he’s coming in, and he nods, grabbing the rum off the cup holder with his free hand, following her up the wooden porch steps, the sound of the ocean roaring soft behind them. The screen door creaks when she pushes it open, and she tugs him inside behind her, the warm light from her kitchen spilling out onto the wet porch boards.
