Rafe Mendez, 53, has spent 22 years as a minor league baseball scout, crisscrossing the South in a dented 2018 Ford F-150 with a beagle-shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview and a trunk full of sunflower seed shells and crumpled scouting reports. His biggest flaw? He hasn’t let anyone stay in his life longer than three days since his ex-wife left him for a rival scout 18 years prior, and he’s got a rigid, self-imposed rule against fraternizing with anyone related to a prospect—league guidelines aside, he thinks mixing work and anything even close to romance is a surefire way to tank both his reputation and a kid’s shot at the majors.
He’s posted up at a dive bar 10 minutes outside a tiny Georgia high school ballfield on a humid July Tuesday, sipping a frosted mug of Pabst that sweats condensation down his wrist, when Clara sits down two stools over. He recognizes her immediately from the stands: she’d been the one screaming so loud when her 17-year-old son, the shortstop Rafe’s been eyeing for the 2025 draft, turned a double play in the seventh inning that the umpire had glanced over twice. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded farm supply store t-shirt, sun streaks bleaching the ends of her auburn hair, calloused fingers tapping the bar as she orders a sweet tea spiked with two shots of bourbon.
He tries to keep his eyes on his scouting sheet, scribbling notes about the kid’s 92 mph throw across the diamond, but he can feel her glancing at him every few seconds. Ten minutes later, she nods at the MLB lanyard peeking out of the pocket of his unbuttoned flannel. “You here for Jase?” she asks, voice warm, with a thick Georgia drawl that makes the end of each sentence drag just a little.
Rafe tenses. He should lie, say he’s just passing through, leave a 20 on the bar and bolt. But she’s grinning, a little dimple in her left cheek, and he smells coconut sunscreen and earthy pecan oil wafting off her when she shifts a little closer, one stool over now, their knees almost brushing under the bar. “Guilty,” he says, and tucks the scouting sheet into his jacket pocket, like hiding it will make the rule he’s about to bend less real.
They talk for an hour, first about Jase—how he’s been playing ball since he was four, how he works the pecan orchard with her every weekend to save up for a new glove, how his dad died six years ago in a farming accident—then about Rafe’s job, the dumb small town fields he’s visited, the time a stray dog ran onto the field mid-game and stole a base. He doesn’t realize he’s leaned in until his elbow brushes hers when he reaches for his beer, and a jolt runs up his arm that he hasn’t felt in close to 20 years. He feels a twist of disgust at himself first—this is a prospect’s mom, he’s crossing every line he ever set for himself, he’s going to get fired, he’s going to get hurt again—then the desire wins out, sharp and warm, when she laughs at his joke about the umpire’s terrible strike zone and her hand rests on his forearm for half a second.
The bar empties out around 10, the bartender wiping down the counter, flipping off the neon beer signs one by one. “I’m closing up in 10, folks,” he calls, and Clara turns to Rafe, her eyes glinting in the low overhead light. “Jase is staying at his cousin’s tonight,” she says, like she’s sharing a secret. “My farm’s 15 minutes out. The pecan orchard looks real pretty at dusk, fireflies all over the rows. You wanna come see?”
Rafe hesitates for three full heartbeats. He thinks about the league rulebook tucked in his glove compartment, the note he wrote to himself after his divorce taped to his dashboard that says NO ATTACHMENTS, the way his chest hurts a little every time he leaves a town without saying goodbye. Then he shoves his scouting notebook into his jacket pocket, slaps a 10 on the bar for the bartender, and nods.
They walk out to his truck together, the air thick and humid, crickets chirping loud in the grass by the parking lot. He opens the passenger door for her, and her hand brushes his when she grabs the door handle to pull herself up. Their eyes lock for three seconds, no one looking away, and he can feel the heat radiating off her arm even through his thick flannel.
He drives down the dirt road to her farm, fireflies blinking on either side of the path, her pointing out rows of pecan trees as they pull up the long drive to her small clapboard house. He parks the truck, turns off the engine, and she reaches over, running a light finger along the thin, faded scar on his left forearm, the one he got falling off a bleacher when he was 19, scouting his first ever high school game. He leans in, and she meets him halfway, the taste of bourbon and sweet tea soft on her lips when they kiss, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant hum of a passing highway car.
