Rafe Mendez, 52, has spent the last 19 years as a minor league scout for the Iowa Cubs, logging 220+ days a year bouncing between small town ballparks in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, sleeping in motels with threadbare sheets and coffee that tastes like burnt rubber. His only consistent companion is his 10-year-old beagle, Moe, and he’s avoided any romantic entanglements since his wife left him for a real estate broker 8 years prior, convinced he’s too set in his grumpy, road-weary ways to make space for anyone else. He’d only shown up to the neighborhood Fourth of July block party because his 82-year-old next door neighbor, Elna, begged him to help haul her folding tables and coolers out to the curb, fully planning to slip away after one beer and a slice of her famous peach pie.
He’s leaning against the thick bark of the oak tree at the end of his driveway, half-listening to a group of local dads argue about college football, when she walks over. He recognizes her immediately: Lila, the woman who moved into the old blue Craftsman three doors down two months prior, separated from her husband, 15 years his junior, the ex-wife of his cousin’s former business partner. He’d nodded at her a handful of times when he was walking Moe early in the morning, had felt stupid for staring when he saw her hauling moving boxes in cutoff shorts and a faded Sox tee, but had never worked up the nerve to say more than a quick hello. The taboo of it nags at him first—he’d met her once at a family Christmas party 6 years prior, when she was still married, still wearing a diamond ring on her left hand—and he tenses up a little when she stops right in front of him, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and cherry pie on her shirt.
“Sorry to bother you,” she says, holding up an unopened bottle of hard cider, her fingers pink from holding the cold glass. “Every table I checked only had those flimsy plastic openers that break if you look at them wrong. Elna said you’d probably have a real one on you.”
He huffs a laugh, digging the metal bottle opener he’s carried in his pocket since he was 16, the one engraved with his old high school baseball number, out of his jeans. Their hands brush when he passes it to her, her skin cold and soft against his calloused, sun-worn knuckles, and he has to fight the stupid urge to jerk his hand back like he’s been burned. He’s always had that stupid, knee-jerk reaction to pretty women these days, half disgust at himself for even noticing, half burning desire he’s spent years shoving down.
She stays standing next to him after she opens the cider, her shoulder almost brushing his bicep, instead of heading back to the group of women she was talking to earlier. She asks him about the beat-up Cubs hat he’s wearing, and he finds himself rambling about his job, about the 19-year-old shortstop he’d scouted last week in Springfield who could throw a ball 95 miles an hour but ate 7 hot dogs between innings of a single game. She laughs, loud and genuine, not the polite little chuckle most people give him when he talks about work, and she leans in a little when he tells a story about a player who once ran the wrong way around the bases after hitting a home run.
The crowd starts to thin out as the sun dips below the rooflines, and the first boom of fireworks echoes down the street. They drift away from the group without talking about it, stepping onto the edge of his lawn so they don’t have to yell over the kids screaming and the loudspeaker blaring country music. Their elbows brush when they both reach for a plate of potato salad off Elna’s folding table at the same time, and she grins up at him, her eyes bright in the pink and orange glow of the sunset. She tells him she moved here to get away from her ex, who’d spent the last 3 years of their marriage lying to her about his gambling debts, that she’d always loved Des Moines, had thought about moving here for years before she finally worked up the nerve. She admits she’s seen him walking Moe every morning, had thought he was cute but too quiet, too intimidating, to walk up and say hello to.
The first firework bursts above them, red and gold, painting her face bright warm colors, and he finds himself admitting he’d noticed her too, had spent more than one morning slowing down Moe’s walk so he could pass her house when she was out watering her flowers. The guilt he’d been carrying all night, the stupid voice in his head telling him it was wrong to even talk to her, to want anything from her, fades away when she leans in a little closer, her arm pressing fully against his now.
They stay there until the last firework fades, until the kids are all being herded back to their houses by their parents, until Elna waves at him from her porch and yells that she doesn’t need help cleaning up, to go have fun. He carries her folding chair and the half-eaten tin of cherry pie she’d brought to the party as they walk down the street to her house, their shoulders knocking together every few steps, no awkward silence, no stupid pressure to say the right thing.
When they get to her porch, she stops at the door, turning to face him, her hand resting on the doorknob. “I’ve got that good bourbon you like, the stuff Elna brought back from her trip to Kentucky last year,” she says, tilting her head a little, a small smile playing on her lips. “Wanna come in for a drink?”
He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t make up an excuse about having to get back to Moe, about leaving for a scouting trip in three days, about how it’s too late or too fast or too complicated. He just nods, shifting the chair in his hand to his other arm.
He follows her up the weathered wooden steps, the distant pop of leftover firecrackers mixing with the quiet thud of his heart against his ribs.
