Rafe Mendez, 53, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the county summer fair, cold IPA sweating in his calloused right hand, the brim of his faded Carolina Mudcats cap pulled low to block the late July sun. He’s been a minor league scout for 27 years, spends most of his days hunched over a radar gun in rickety high school bleachers, eating gas station hot dogs, driving backroads lined with cornfields and dilapidated barns. His biggest flaw is that he holds grudges like they’re championship trophies, none sharper than the one he’s carried for 30 years against Lila Cole, his high school sweetheart who he’d thought left him for a cocky D1 shortstop the summer after they graduated.
The air smells like fried Oreos, cut grass, and charcoal smoke from the food trucks lined along the fence, a cover band in the distance grinding through a rough rendition of Jack & Diane, kids screaming on the Tilt-A-Whirl just past the beer tent. He’s watching a group of local teens bicker through a cornhole game when someone trips over the cooler at his feet, cold lemonade sloshing across the front of his gray team t-shirt, a soft body colliding with his chest.
He’s ready to snap a sharp comment before he looks down. It’s Lila. Her honey-blonde hair is streaked with silver now, pulled back in a loose braid, she’s wearing a linen sundress the color of wild clover, scuffed white sneakers, freckles across her nose darker from summer sun. Her palm is pressed flat to his chest to steady herself, thumb brushing the faint, ragged scar just above his heart, the one he got from a rogue fastball during a playoff game junior year. She freezes, her hazel eyes flecked with gold going wide, and she says his name like she’s been turning it over in her mouth for years.
He can’t breathe for a second. The last he’d heard, she was married to his old minor league manager, living in a house on the other side of the county, teaching pottery at the community center. Mutual friends had dropped hints a few months back that her husband had left her for a 28-year-old league admin, moved to Florida without so much as a note, but Rafe had ignored the comments, too stubborn to care.
She pulls her hand back fast, cheeks flushing, apologizing over and over, dabbing at the damp spot on his shirt with a crumpled napkin from her pocket. He stops her, his fingers wrapping around her wrist, the skin there soft, a faint smudge of clay under her thumbnail. He says it’s fine, no harm done, his voice rougher than he means it to be.
She sits down next to him on the picnic bench, their knees knocking every time someone squeezes past the narrow aisle between tables, and she doesn’t shift away. She tells him she’s been teaching pottery full time for 12 years, sells mugs and bowls at the farmers market every Saturday, her kid just graduated from WVU, moved to Asheville to work at a craft brewery. He tells her about the 17-year-old lefty he just scouted outside of Asheville, throws 94 with a curveball that drops off a table, could be in the majors in three years.
The lemonade on his shirt dries sticky in the sun. He smells lavender on her, mixed with lemon Pledge, the same scent she wore to prom. She admits she didn’t leave him for that shortstop back in 1993, her mom threatened to pull her out of community college and send her to live with her aunt in Ohio if she kept seeing Rafe, said he’d never make anything of himself chasing baseball dreams instead of a “real” office job. She’d been too scared to tell him the truth, too ashamed she didn’t have the nerve to stand up to her mom.
Rafe feels the 30 years of resentment he’s carried melt like ice in the sun, sharp and fast, leaving nothing but a dull ache for all the wasted time. He leans in a little, their shoulders brushing, and she tilts her chin up, her eyes locking on his, he can feel her warm breath on his jaw. He doesn’t make a big, dramatic move, just laces his calloused fingers through hers, the rough pads of his fingers catching on the small callus on her index finger from years of throwing clay on the wheel. She squeezes his hand so tight his knuckles go white.
They sit there for an hour, laughing about the time they snuck into the dugout after a playoff win, shared a cherry slushie that dripped all over her prom dress, complaining about the bad cover band, swapping stories about road trips and late nights in the studio. The sun dips low, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and rose, fair lights flicker on, casting gold across her face. She asks if he wants to come back to her studio, she has a mug she threw 28 years earlier, painted a lopsided Mudcats logo on the side, kept it on her shelf the whole time even when her husband told her to throw it out.
Rafe nods, grabbing his cap from the table, slinging his worn canvas scout bag over his shoulder. He steps over the same cooler leg that had tripped her an hour earlier, his palm warm where it rests on the small of her back as they walk toward her beat-up silver pickup parked at the edge of the fairground.
