Manny Ruiz, 59, has scouted minor league baseball for the Cincinnati Reds farm system for 22 years, and he’s never been the kind of guy to let a grudge fade fast. Seven years after his wife passed from ovarian cancer, he still refuses to shop at the grocery store where the manager once made a snide comment about her buying too much frozen yogurt during chemo. Three years after a young freelance journalist wrote an op-ed calling his team’s stadium funding a “waste of taxpayer cash” that almost killed the accessible seating expansion he’d spent two years lobbying for, he still skips past the local paper’s rack at the gas station, flips the radio off anytime a local news segment comes on, and walks the long way around the press box at every home game.
The annual town youth rec league BBQ is the last place he expects to run into her, but he’s halfway through a sauerkraut-slathered brat, cold Pabst in his other hand, when he turns to yell at a kid throwing a wiffle ball too close to the dessert table and bumps straight into her chest. Beer sloshes over the rim of his can, soaking the front of her crisp white linen shirt, right at the curve of her collarbone. He sputters an apology, grabs a handful of napkins off the nearest table, and dabs at the wet spot before he thinks better of it, his knuckles brushing her warm skin. She doesn’t flinch. When he meets her eyes, he recognizes her immediately—Lila Marlow, the byline he’d stared at so many times he could’ve traced it blind, the woman he’d blamed for three months of yelling at city council meetings and sleepless nights worrying his sister, who uses a wheelchair, would never get to sit close enough to the field to see the games she loved.
He expects a snarky comment, a demand for a new shirt, something that will justify the anger he’s carried for years. Instead, she laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the noise of cornhole bags thudding and kids screaming over melted popsicles. “Figured I’d mess up the white shirt sooner or later,” she says, wiping a smudge of BBQ sauce off her cheek with the back of her hand, and he notices the chipped pale blue nail polish on her fingers, the medical alert lanyard sticking out of her tote bag printed with her mom’s name and MS diagnosis. She introduces herself, even though he already knows, and admits she’s been meaning to track him down for months. She quit the city paper six months prior, moved back to town to care for her mom, and after sitting in on three rec league meetings where the team donated $20,000 for new gear and free summer camp slots for low-income kids, she realized she’d only talked to the corrupt city council members siphoning off stadium funds when she wrote that op-ed, never anyone actually connected to the team.
He wants to stay mad, wants to mutter a half-hearted acceptance of her apology and walk away, but she smells like coconut sunscreen and citrus seltzer, and when she sits down on the edge of a weathered picnic table across from him, her knee brushes his under the slats, and the anger fizzes out fast, like a soda left open in the sun. They talk for an hour, first about the op-ed, then about the 17-year-old left-handed pitcher he just signed from the local high school, whose mom works two jobs to keep the lights on, then about her mom’s favorite baseball memory, going to a Reds game in 1995 and catching a foul ball off Barry Larkin’s bat. The sun dips low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and cicadas buzz loud in the oak trees overhead, and he finds himself leaning in when she talks, like he’s scared he’ll miss a word over the crowd noise.
She teases him about the ratty, sun-faded Reds cap he wears even to a “fancy” fundraiser, and he teases her about the streak of BBQ sauce she’s had on her lower lip for the last 20 minutes that she hasn’t noticed. Before he can think better of it, he reaches out, swipes the sauce off with his thumb, and the tip of his finger brushes the soft edge of her mouth. She freezes for half a second, then smiles, slow and warm, and her eyes don’t leave his. She admits she’s been going to his usual dive bar every Wednesday night for two months, sitting in the back booth, too nervous to say hi because she knew he hated her, and she’d been watching him laugh with the other scouts, bring free hot dogs to the homeless guy who hangs out by the door, and she’d wanted to ask him out for weeks.
He doesn’t even hesitate when she asks if he wants to skip the rest of the fundraiser, go get a milkshake at the 24-hour diner down by the river, where no one from the town council or the rec league will bother them. He grabs his cap off the table, tucks it on his head, and when she slips her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, her palm is soft and warm against his calloused, baseball-glove-worn skin. He hasn’t held anyone’s hand like that since his wife died, and the knot of guilt he’d been carrying in his chest all evening loosens, like something he didn’t know he was holding onto finally slips free. When she tugs him toward the parking lot, the worn brim of his ball cap tilts down to hide the goofy, out-of-practice grin spreading across his face, and he doesn’t resist.
