Moe Rogan, 53, has spent 22 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up Silverado, surviving on gas station coffee and wintergreen gum. His biggest flaw is he never lets a grudge die: he still resents the girl who stood him up for prom in 1988, has a faint scar on his left knuckle from punching his locker when she didn’t show up to his driveway that night. He’d been passing through rural Ohio after scouting a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher with a 96 mph fastball when he spotted the VFW parking lot packed with pickup trucks, knew the fish fry would be worth stopping for.
He’s hunched over a folding table scribbling notes on the pitcher’s wonky curveball when a tray of coleslaw bumps his elbow, creamy cabbage dribbling across the page of his scouting notebook. He looks up ready to snap, and freezes. It’s Clara Bennett, the same dimples in her cheeks, a thick silver streak running through her chestnut hair, wearing faded jeans and a hoodie emblazoned with the county animal rescue logo. She leans in with a paper napkin, her forearm brushing his stubbled jaw, the lavender of her hand lotion cutting through the room’s mix of fried grease and cigarette smoke. “Shit, I am so sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she says, her voice a little deeper, warmer than he remembers.
He snorts, swiping at the mess with the edge of his plaid flannel. “Figures. You always did have a knack for messing up my plans.” She blinks, then her eyes lock on the dented 1988 Westside High class ring on his index finger, and she gasps. “Moe? Moe Rogan?” She sits down across from him, the plastic bench so narrow her knee knocks his under the table, the heat of her leg seeping through his worn denim. She laughs, shaking her head. “I haven’t seen you since graduation. You still mad about prom?” He crosses his arms, nods, says he drove around town for three hours waiting for her, then spent the rest of the night drinking cheap beer with his teammates, convinced she’d run off with the college guy she’d been partnered with for chemistry lab.
She leans forward, elbows on the sticky vinyl tablecloth, so close he can see the faint laugh lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes, the smudge of golden retriever fur on her hoodie sleeve. “My little brother had a seizure that night. Mom couldn’t reach you, we didn’t have cell phones back then. I left a letter in your mailbox, your mom called me a week later and said she threw it away, told me to stay away from you, said I was a bad influence.” Moe’s chest goes tight. He remembers his mom hating Clara, thought she was too wild, too likely to talk him into skipping college to follow a roots rock band out west. The anger he’s carried for 35 years feels heavy, stupid, melting fast under her steady gaze. The jukebox in the corner switches to Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” the low hum of other patrons’ conversations fading to background noise.
They talk for an hour, him telling her about the road, the way he lives out of a duffel bag, leaves his tabby cat with his sister when he’s traveling. She tells him she’s been widowed three years, runs the local animal rescue, has three horses and 12 rescue dogs on her farm 10 minutes outside town. She teases him for still chewing the same brand of wintergreen gum, he teases her for still biting her lower lip when she’s thinking, the same quirk she had when they’d make out in his beat-up Camaro after football games. Her hand brushes his when she passes him a slice of peach pie, his knee presses harder against hers under the table, neither of them move away. The sun dips below the treeline, the neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign above the bar glowing brighter, painting her cheeks soft pink.
She stands up, slinging her canvas tote over her shoulder, grinning like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. “I still have that old prom dress, hanging in a garment bag in my attic. And I got a porch swing and a cooler of craft beer in the fridge. You wanna come see the horses? Or you got somewhere you gotta be?” He thinks about the 6 AM drive to Indianapolis, the scouting report he’s supposed to file by midnight, the 35 years of missed time stretching between them. He shoves his notebook into his duffel, slings it over his shoulder, grins back. “Indianapolis can wait.”
They walk out to her beat-up Ford F-150, cool April air nipping at his cheeks, her hand brushing his as they cross the gravel parking lot. When she opens the passenger door for him, he catches a whiff of pine air freshener and dog fur, the exact same scent that clung to her leather jacket when they snuck out to the lake senior year. He lifts himself up into the seat, and she closes the door behind him, her fingers brushing his ankle for half a second before she walks around to the driver’s side.
