Moe Vella, 53, is a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 287,000 miles on his 2017 Ford F-150 in the last six years, chasing high school and college prospects across the Midwest. His biggest flaw is that he still holds a grudge sharp enough to cut glass against his ex-wife, who left him 12 years prior for a used car salesman with a boat and a penchant for cheap hair gel. He’s turned down every blind date his sister has set him up on since, convinced any romantic connection is just a trap waiting to snap shut.
He slumps into a scuffed vinyl bar stool off Route 57 in southern Illinois around 10 p.m., rain dripping off the brim of his frayed 2006 World Series Cardinals cap onto the counter. The bar smells like fried pickles, old beer, and lemon Pledge, the jukebox spitting out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts no one under 40 would recognize. He orders bourbon neat, pulls his beat-up scouting notebook out of his jacket pocket, and jots a quick note about the 19-year-old shortstop he watched that afternoon, the kid who hit two home runs and still ate a pack of gummy fruit snacks before every at-bat.
A warm, cinnamon-and-vanilla scent curls into his space a minute later, and he glances up to see a woman with wavy auburn hair and chipped pale blue nail polish slide into the stool next to him. He recognizes her immediately: Lila Marlow, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. The last time he saw her was his wedding 18 years prior, when she was 23 and so nervous in her puffy lavender bridesmaid dress she spilled an entire glass of merlot down the front of his rental suit pants. His first instinct is to flinch, to grab his notebook and leave, because he’s spent a decade writing off everyone related to his ex as selfish and shallow.
“Didn’t think I’d see you around here,” she says, grinning, and taps the brim of his Cardinals cap with her index finger. Her knuckle brushes his forehead by accident, and the contact sends a tiny jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in years. “Still wearing that ratty thing? I remember you bragged about it at the wedding, said you were gonna wear it to every game you scouted for the rest of your life.”
He blinks, surprised she remembers that. He thought no one but him had paid attention to that throwaway comment. He finds himself grinning back before he can stop himself. “Still fits. Turns out you don’t outgrow a good cap if you don’t do dumb stuff like bleach your hair or get a dumb head tattoo.”
She snorts, sipping her IPA, and their knees brush under the counter when she shifts to get more comfortable. She doesn’t move away. He can feel the heat of her leg through his worn denim jeans, and he has to force himself not to look down, to keep his eyes on her face. She tells him she’s been working at this bar three nights a week while she finishes her nursing degree, got divorced a year prior after her ex-husband spent all their savings on a failed hot dog stand venture. She says she always thought his ex was an idiot for leaving him, that she saw how he worked two jobs back then to put her through cosmetology school, how he never complained even when she spent half their rent money on fancy skincare products she never used.
The internal conflict hums loud in his chest for the next hour. One part of him screams that this is wrong, that hooking up with his ex’s cousin is the kind of messy drama he’s spent 12 years running from, that everyone in her family will lose their minds if they find out. The other part of him can’t stop staring at the way her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes, the way she laughs so hard at his dumb story about the catcher who got caught sneaking a puppy onto the team bus that she snorts beer out of her nose, the way she keeps leaning in closer like she actually cares about what he has to say. No one’s looked at him like that in so long he forgot what it felt like.
The bartender locks up at midnight, rain pouring so hard outside the streetlights blur into soft orange streaks. They stand under the tiny awning out front, and Lila groans when she turns the key in her old Honda Civic and the engine doesn’t turn over. “Of course,” she mutters, kicking the front tire. “Piece of crap died on me last week too, I haven’t had time to take it to the shop.”
He offers to drive her home before he can overthink it. She nods, and when they step off the awning to walk to his truck, a gust of wind blows rain straight into his face. She laughs, reaches up to brush a wet strand of hair off his forehead, and her hand lingers on his jaw for three full seconds. He can feel the callus on her thumb from working the bar tap, hear the rain hammering the awning above them, smell the cinnamon gum she’s chewing mixed with the rain on her jacket. He leans down and kisses her, slow, no rush, and she kisses him back, her hands fisting the front of his leather jacket like she’s scared he’ll pull away.
He drives her to her small ranch house on the edge of town, the truck cab warm and quiet, Johnny Cash still playing low on the radio. She invites him in when they pull into the driveway, says she has leftover apple pie in the fridge and extra blankets if he wants to stay for the storm. He doesn’t hesitate. He follows her up the porch steps, her hand slipping into his, the rain tapping soft against the roof over their heads.
