Marlon Pritchard, 53, leans against the splintered wooden pole of the county fair beer tent, cold IPA sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around its middle. He’s a minor league baseball scout, spends 11 months of the year crisscrossing the Rust Belt in his dented 2017 F-150, radar gun tucked in the center console, notebook full of player batting averages stuffed in the breast pocket of his faded gray flannel. His left knee throbs, leftover from a college ACL tear that ended his own playing career, and he shifts his weight to his right leg, scuffing the toe of his worn work boot in the dust. He hates small town fairs, hates the forced small talk with former classmates who want to rehash the 1989 state championship run, hates that he still comes every year out of some stupid loyalty to the memory of his best friend Ted, who used to drag him here every August to eat fried Oreos and hit on the beer tent waitresses.
He’s halfway through debating bailing early and driving back to his empty rental house when someone taps his shoulder. He turns, and for half a second he doesn’t recognize her. Sun-streaked brown hair cut to her shoulders, cropped linen shirt unbuttoned one notch lower than would be considered proper for church, cutoff jean shorts that show tanned, freckled legs, a tattoo of a baseball bat wrapped in sunflowers curling around her left forearm. She smirks, and the dimples in her cheeks click something loose in his memory. It’s Lila, Ted’s daughter, the kid who used to follow them around the high school dugout when she was 10, begging for sunflower seeds and yelling at the umpires when they made bad calls. He’d not seen her since her mom moved to Florida four years prior, had only gotten the occasional Christmas card with a photo of her standing in front of her high school art classroom.
His first reaction is hot, sharp embarrassment, because he’d just been staring at the curve of her hip where her shorts ride up, and he feels like a creep. She laughs, leaning in to hug him, and the scent of coconut shampoo and peach seltzer hits him, warm and sweet. Her hand brushes the notebook in his flannel pocket when she pulls back, and the light contact sends a jolt up his arm. They move out of the way of a group of teens sprinting past with cotton candy stuck to their fingers, and her shoulder presses against his for three full seconds before she steps away, leaning against the pole next to him, close enough that he can feel the heat of her arm through his shirt.
She tells him she moved back to town three months prior, took a job teaching art at the same high school they both graduated from, got divorced last year after her ex-husband cheated on her with a bartender from the bowling alley. He nods, fumbling for words, still stuck on the fact that the snot-nosed kid who used to draw mustaches on his scouting reports is now a grown woman who’s looking at him like she knows exactly how flustered he is. She teases him about the faded Mud Hens cap he’s worn for 12 years, says she remembers him wearing it to her 16th birthday party, when he’d stepped in to kick out her drunk ex-boyfriend after he’d tried to start a fight.
They walk slow, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the distant sound of the ferris wheel’s bell fading behind them. The grass along the sidewalk is still damp from the afternoon rain, and the air smells like cut clover and fried dough. When they get to the field, they climb up the old metal bleachers, the paint chipped and sticky with decades of spilled soda, and sit down on the top row, looking out over the overgrown infield. She leans her head on his shoulder for half a second, testing the waters, and he doesn’t pull away.
She tells him she’s had a crush on him since that 16th birthday party, when he’d carried her passed out best friend to the couch and stayed to make sure everyone got home safe, that all the guys her age are either immature losers who play video games until 2 a.m. or divorced dads who only want to talk about their alimony payments. He feels that sharp twist in his chest, the war between the part of him that says this is wrong, that he’s betraying Ted, and the part of him that hasn’t felt this light in a decade. He lifts his hand, brushes a stray strand of hair off her face, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leans into the touch.
He says people in town will run their mouths, say he’s a creep for dating his best friend’s kid. She laughs, soft, and leans in, her mouth inches from his, says she doesn’t care what the old biddies at the grocery store say, that she’s waited long enough. She kisses him, slow, and she tastes like peach seltzer and mint gum, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the curly hair sticking out from under his cap. He wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her closer, the rough fabric of his flannel rubbing against her bare arm. He pulls back for half a second to check his phone, sees a text from his cousin asking where he wandered off to, shoves the phone back in his pocket without replying. He leans in to kiss her again, his calloused hand resting warm on the bare skin of her thigh where her shorts ride up.
