Rafe Mendoza, 53, has spent most of the last two decades hunched over bleachers in small-town high school baseball fields, radar gun in one hand, lukewarm gas station coffee in the other, scouting left-handed pitchers with enough heat to make it to AA ball. He’s stubborn to a fault, still refuses to use a digital scouting app instead of his tattered leather-bound notebook, and hasn’t let anyone other than his 78-year-old next door neighbor step foot in his lake house since his wife left him seven years prior, no questions, no warning, while he was on a 10-day trip through West Virginia. His neighbor dragged him to the town’s annual chili cookoff that crisp October afternoon, said he’d been holed up long enough watching 2019 minor league game reruns, and Rafe didn’t have the heart to say no, not after she’d brought him peach cobbler every Sunday all summer.
He was leaning against a splintered oak tree, picking at a bowl of brisket chili so spicy his eyes were watering, when he stepped back to avoid a kid chasing a golden retriever and slammed straight into someone behind him. Half the chili sloshed out of the paper bowl, splattering across the front of a navy blue flannel shirt dotted with tiny ink stains. He fumbled for a stack of napkins in his jeans pocket, stammering an apology, and when he looked up he recognized her: Clara, who’d opened the tiny independent bookstore on Main Street two years prior, who he’d only ever seen through the front window restocking the poetry shelf when he drove into town for groceries. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the roar of the crowd cheering for the chili contest finalists, and swatted his hand away gently when he tried to dab at the stain on her shirt. “Relax,” she said, “I spilled cold brew on that same spot this morning. It was already a lost cause.”
Her shoulder was six inches from his, close enough that he could smell vanilla candle wax and old paper dust on her sweater, and he found himself leaning in without meaning to, something he hadn’t done with anyone in years. She told him she was at the cookoff to pick up three bowls of chili for her dad, who was recovering from hip replacement surgery and couldn’t leave the house, and he told her he spent most of the year on the road, scouting kids who still thought they’d make the big leagues. She didn’t do that polite nod people usually did when he told them his job, the one that said they thought it was a silly waste of a grown man’s time. She leaned in further, her knee brushing his when a group of people walked past, and asked if he had any good stories about players who snuck out of hotels to go to county fairs, or threw no-hitters in the middle of thunderstorms.
He talked for 20 minutes straight, told her about the 17-year-old lefty in rural Kentucky who’d thrown 9 straight strikeouts in a downpour last spring, then asked his coach if he could leave early to go to his sister’s 8th grade graduation. He didn’t realize how long he’d been talking until the first drops of rain started to fall, and she grimaced, saying her beat-up sedan was parked three blocks away, and she didn’t want the chili to get cold before she got it to her dad. He offered to drive her, before he could talk himself out of it, and she nodded, grinning, when he grabbed the three paper bowls of chili from her hands to carry them to his beat-up Ford F-150.
When she climbed up into the passenger seat, her hand rested on his bicep for half a second to steady herself, calloused from stacking heavy hardcovers for hours a day, and he didn’t flinch. He hadn’t let anyone touch him that casually, that intentionally, since his wife left. He drove her to the tiny cottage a mile out of town she shared with her dad, carried the chili up to the porch for her, and when she asked if he wanted to come in for coffee, that she’d been hunting for a copy of *Ball Four* for the store’s vintage sports section for months, he almost said no. Almost made up an excuse about having to review scouting reports that night, almost ran back to his empty house where he didn’t have to talk to anyone, didn’t have to risk getting left again. But he said yes.
They sat at her chipped pine kitchen table, drinking burnt drip coffee, while her dad napped in the recliner in the living room, old westerns playing low on the TV. Rafe pulled the tattered, dog-eared copy of *Ball Four* he’d kept in his truck’s glove compartment since college out of his jacket pocket, the one with his old college number scrawled on the inside cover, and handed it to her. She ran her finger along the worn spine, smiling, and asked if he wanted to stay for dinner, that she was making meatloaf and mashed potatoes, enough for three. He nodded, pulling out the chair next to hers instead of across the table, the rain tapping soft and steady against the kitchen window. He brushes a stray maple leaf off her shoulder as she turns to grab the meatloaf pan from the oven, his fingers lingering just long enough to feel the warmth of her skin through the thin cotton of her shirt.
