Moe Rotolo, 53, minor league baseball scout for the Tennessee Smokies, leans his shoulder against the weathered pine bar of the Black Mountain beer garden, scuffed work boots propped on the lower rail. A half-empty hazy IPA sweats in his hand, the label peeling off from condensation. The air smells like fried dill pickles, burnt hot dog charcoal, and the faint, throaty rumble of a 1972 Camaro idling in the parking lot for the weekly summer classic car show. He’s fresh off scouting a left-handed high school pitcher with a 94 mph fastball, crumpled scouting notes sticking out the pocket of his faded navy flannel, and he’d planned to head straight back to his cabin rental, knock back a few more beers, and pass out before 10.
A soft weight slams into his elbow, jostling his beer enough that a half-ounce sloshes over the rim onto his jeans. He turns, ready to grumble, and finds himself staring down at a woman in cutoff jean shorts and a threadbare NC State hoodie, her hazel eyes crinkled with mortification. She holds up a half-empty can of peach hard seltzer in one hand, the other fluttering near his damp jeans like she’s afraid to touch him to wipe it off. She smells like coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip gloss, and there’s a pale tan line on her left ring finger where a wedding band sat for 22 years.
She apologizes three times in 10 seconds, says her friend just shoved her to point at a mint condition 1968 Mustang across the lot, she wasn’t looking where she was going. Moe snorts, says it’s fine, the jeans were already stained with infield dirt from the game earlier anyway. She laughs, and the sound is warm, rough around the edges like she’s spent the past week yelling at rowdy teens or singing too loud at cover shows. She recognizes the Smokies logo stitched on his flannel, says her ex-husband is the head coach of the high school team he just watched play, he’d mentioned a scout was coming into town this week.
Moe’s gut twists a little, sharp and hot. He’s supposed to meet that coach at 10 a.m. the next day to negotiate a tryout offer for the pitcher. Hooking up with the guy’s ex-wife before that meeting is the kind of stupid, unplanned move he’d spent the past 8 years avoiding. He’d built his entire scouting reputation on being professional, unflappable, never letting personal stuff bleed into work, not since his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old software sales rep and he almost blew a scouting trip because he was too drunk to fill out his reports. He shifts a half step back, puts a few inches of space between them, nods like he’s just making polite small talk.
She doesn’t take the hint. She leans against the bar next to him, close enough that her bare arm brushes his bicep when she lifts her seltzer to take a sip. She teases him about the crumpled notes sticking out of his pocket, says she used to keep score for her son’s little league team for 6 years, she can tell a good scout from a guy who just shows up to drink beer and watch guys throw balls. He finds himself leaning back in, closing that gap he’d just created, telling her about the lefty’s curveball, about the time he scouted a kid in rural Alabama who threw 96 mph but couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if he was standing 10 feet away.
They move to a splintered picnic table on the edge of the lot when the bar gets too crowded. She sits across from him, shifting her leg so her knee brushes his under the table when she leans forward to steal a fried pickle off his plate. When he gets barbecue sauce on his thumb reaching for a napkin, she grabs his wrist without asking, wipes it off with the edge of her hoodie, her fingers lingering on the pulse point under his skin for three full seconds. He can feel the callus on her index finger, from years of planting tomato plants in her backyard, she says. She mentions she moved in with her sister three weeks prior, caught her ex cheating with a 24-year-old student teacher, hasn’t felt like she’s existed as anything other than “the coach’s wife” for half her life.
The crowd thins out around 9:30, the car engines dying off one by one, a fine drizzle starting to fall that makes the string lights strung above the lot glow soft and golden. She says she doesn’t want to go back to her sister’s, where her 16-year-old niece is blasting Taylor Swift and asking her nonstop about the divorce. Moe’s brain screams at him to say he’s got an early meeting, to drive her to her sister’s, to stick to the plan he’d made that morning. Instead he says he’s got a cabin 10 minutes outside town, no loud teens, no ex-husbands, just a porch swing and a half-empty bottle of bourbon he picked up in Kentucky last week.
She grabs his hand when they cross the wet parking lot to his F-150, her palm warm and a little shaky, their fingers laced together like they’ve been doing it for years. The drive to the cabin is quiet, the sound of rain tapping the windshield, old Tom Petty playing low on the radio. When they get inside, he doesn’t make the first move, still half convinced he’s going to mess this up, mess up the meeting, mess up the only good thing he’s had come his way in years. She leans in first, kisses him, tastes like peach seltzer and mint gum, and he kisses her back, letting all the overplanning, all the rules he’d made for himself, melt away for the first time in nearly a decade.
They wake up at 8 the next morning, sunlight filtering through the pine trees outside the bedroom window, the smell of coffee brewing from the cheap drip maker on the kitchen counter. His phone dings on the nightstand, a text from the coach saying he’s running 30 minutes late to their meeting, no rush. She laughs when he shows her the text, holds up her own phone to show him she’d texted her ex an hour prior, told him she ran into Moe the night before, said he’s a good guy, don’t give him a hard time on the tryout bonus terms. He pours two mugs of coffee, hands her one, and they sit on the porch swing watching the mist curl over the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. He brushes a stray wet curl off her forehead, and for the first time in nearly a decade, he doesn’t make a mental note to guard his heart.
