Rayce Pritchard, 53, leans against the scuffed oak back bar of the Brunswick dive he used to sneak into at 17, sweating through the armpits of his faded Bulldogs polo, a half-drunk draft beer sweating in his grip. He’d told his sister he only showed up to the 35th high school reunion to rub his minor league scout career in the faces of the guys who called him a burnout for skipping UGA’s pre-med track, but that was a lie. He showed up because she’d texted him three days prior: Lila’s coming. He’d spent 33 years telling anyone who asked that he didn’t care what happened to the girl who’d bailed on their cross-country road trip plan three days after graduation to move to LA with a guy she’d met at a beach bonfire. That lie was so old it tasted like ash in his mouth.
The bar hums with the noise of middle-aged people yelling over 90s country, guys in golf shirts slapping each other on the back over forgotten football wins, women comparing grandkid photos by the jukebox. Rayce is halfway through his second beer, debating bailing before anyone asks him how many “future MLB stars” he’s found that year, when the door swings open and the salt air off the marsh blows in, carrying the scent of coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm. He freezes. He’d know that smell anywhere. Lila stands in the doorway, silver hoops glinting under the neon Pabst sign, soft green sundress skimming her calves, streaks of gray threading through the honey blonde hair she still wears loose over her shoulders. She’s carrying a frayed canvas tote printed with the Savannah Bananas logo, and his chest tightens—he scouted two of their outfielders just last spring, spent three weeks camped out in their stands eating boiled peanuts and scribbling notes in his weathered notebook.
She spots him immediately, no hesitation, weaves through the crowd of former classmates like she’s been practicing the path for years. She stops so close he can feel the heat off her arm when she leans against the bar next to him, not even an inch of space between their shoulders. “Told your sister I’d bet $20 you’d show if she dropped my name,” she says, grinning, and her eyes crinkle at the corners the exact same way they did when she’d talk him into ditching study hall to go surf fish off the pier. The bartender slides her a glass of sweet tea, her go-to order even back when she’d lie and say it was spiked to impress the college guys, and when she reaches for it her forearm brushes his. Her skin is calloused at the knuckles, he notices, rough from decades of holding charcoal and watercolor brushes, the same hands that used to draw little baseballs on his notebook margins during math class.
For 10 full seconds he can’t think of anything to say, the grudge he’s carried for 30 years sitting heavy in his throat, all the mean lines he’d practiced on the drive over vanishing entirely. “You paint still?” he says finally, and she lights up, pulls a folded print out of her tote, a watercolor of a heron standing in the marsh grass, every blade sharp and bright, signed in the bottom corner in her loopy cursive. She says she moved back to Brunswick two years ago, bought a tiny cottage on the marsh, left LA after her divorce six months prior, got sick of the smog and the agents who cared more about how her art looked on Instagram than how it felt to make it. He tells her about his scouting trips, pulls up a photo on his phone of a 17-year-old shortstop from Macon he just signed, kid who throws 92 mph across the diamond and already has a better batting average than half the Braves’ current line-up. She leans in to look, her shoulder pressed firm to his, and he can hear the little huff of surprise she makes when she sees the kid’s stats, warm against his neck.
He doesn’t mean to admit he drove to LA in 1998, slept in his truck outside her apartment for three days, too scared to knock, too stubborn to leave, but it slips out when she mentions she used to walk to the same 7-Eleven on her corner every morning for cherry Slurpees, the same kind he used to buy her after practice. She goes quiet for a minute, stirs the ice in her tea with a straw, then says she wrote him 12 letters between 1990 and 1999, all stuffed in a shoebox under her bed, never sent, scared he’d tell her to go to hell for leaving. The bar noise fades out entirely for a second, all he can hear is the hum of the cooler behind the bar and the distant sound of waves crashing a few blocks away. He reaches out, brushes a strand of wind-tousled hair off her cheek, his fingers grazing the soft line of her jaw, and she leans into the touch like she’s been waiting for it for 30 years.
They leave before the reunion group photo, skip the after-party at the old football field, pile into his beat-up 2008 F150, the windows rolled all the way down, the salt air whipping through the cab. She rests her hand on his thigh the whole drive to her cottage, her palm warm through the worn denim of his jeans, and he doesn’t even bother turning on the radio, too busy listening to her talk about the bluebirds that nest in the oak tree outside her front porch, the way the marsh turns pink every sunset. When he pulls into her gravel driveway, she doesn’t move to get out right away, turns to him, the porch light gilding the edges of her hair. “I baked peach pie this morning,” she says, thumb brushing the seam of his jeans right above his knee. “It’s still on the counter. You wanna stay?”
He turns off the truck, grabs his faded Braves cap off the dash, tucks the watercolor print of the heron into the pocket of his flannel shirt he’d tossed on the passenger seat. He doesn’t say anything, just nods, and when she grins that same old crinkly-eyed grin he thought he’d never see again, he reaches across the center console, laces his calloused, glove-worn fingers through hers, and follows her up the porch steps.
