Manny Ruiz, 52, has logged 180,000 miles on his beat-up 2017 F150 in three years as a minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds. He’s got a strict rule he hasn’t broken once in his career: no fraternizing with players or their families off the field. It’s not just league policy, it’s self-preservation, leftover from his ex-wife leaving him for a college recruiting coach 12 years prior, after she’d spent six months badgering Manny to pull strings to get her nephew a walk-on spot. He hasn’t been on a date in eight years, spends most nights eating gas station jerky and sleeping in truck stop parking lots, and swears he’s fine with that.
It’s mid-July in northern Alabama, humidity so thick it clings to the back of his throat like molasses, and he’s the only scout that stuck around through a 45 minute rain delay to watch a left-handed JUCO pitcher hit 92 on the radar gun three straight times in the seventh inning. He’s camped out at a dive bar two exits off I-65, scribbling notes in a tattered leather notebook, a half-drunk pilsner sweating through a paper coaster on the bar top, the air thick with the smell of fried pickles and stale draft beer, when she sits down two stools over.
She’s wearing a faded Auburn softball hoodie, cutoff denim shorts, white sneakers caked in red infield dirt. When she reaches across the bar for the bowl of salted peanuts, her sun-warmed forearm brushes his, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen mixed with the rain still damp in her wavy dark hair. She apologizes, soft, with a laugh that crinkles the corners of her hazel eyes, and he nods, too busy noticing the thin scar slicing across her left wrist to form a real response. She orders a sweet tea with a shot of bourbon, and they sit in quiet for ten minutes, the jukebox spitting old George Strait deep cuts, the chatter of the post-game crowd buzzing around them.
She notices the Reds lanyard peeking out of his flannel shirt pocket first, and smirks. “You’re the scout that stayed through the rain, right?” She nods at his notebook, open to the page with her son’s name scrawled across the top in messy cursive. “That’s my boy, Javi. Threw that no-hitter last month against the community college in Tuscaloosa.”
Manny’s jaw tightens immediately, his rule blaring in his head like a fire alarm. He starts to close his notebook, make an excuse to leave, before she holds up a hand, still smiling. “Relax. I’m not here to beg you for a contract. I just saw you sitting here alone, and figured you could use a refill. On me.” She flags down the bartender, orders him a shot of the same bourbon she’s drinking, and he doesn’t argue.
They talk for two hours. She’s a high school PE teacher from Montgomery, widowed six years when her husband died in a construction accident, spends every weekend driving across the south to watch Javi pitch. She tells him she played second base in college, blew out her knee her senior year and lost her shot at the pro women’s league, and the scar on her wrist is from a slide into home when she was 16. He tells her about growing up in Tampa, playing catcher in high school before a shoulder injury ended his own pro dreams, how he still sleeps with a baseball under his bed for good luck. When she leans over to point at a note he scribbled about Javi’s curveball, her knee brushes his under the bar, warm and solid through the thin fabric of her shorts, and she doesn’t move away. He can feel the heat of her skin seep through his worn denim jeans, and for the first time in years, he doesn’t shut down the flutter of want low in his gut.
The bar closes at 1 a.m., and the rain is coming down harder now, drumming against the tin roof so loud you can barely hear yourself think. She groans when she tries to start her minivan in the parking lot, the engine sputtering and dying three straight times. She turns to him, rain dripping off the brim of her baseball cap, and asks if he can give her a ride to the motel three miles down the road, where she’s got a separate room from Javi and the rest of the team.
He hesitates for half a second, the rule still ringing in his head, the thought of the league finding out, of ruining Javi’s shot, of getting burned again, all flashing through his mind. Then he looks at her, mascara smudged a little under her eyes from the rain, smiling like she already knows his answer, and he nods.
They run to his truck, both soaking wet by the time they yank the doors shut. He twists the key, turns the heat up high, and when he leans over to brush a stray leaf off her shoulder, his hand brushes the top of her thigh. She catches his wrist before he can pull away, her fingers warm and firm around his bone, and holds his gaze. “I know you’ve got rules,” she says, quiet enough that the rain almost drowns her out. “But some rules are just made to be broken, right?”
He doesn’t pull away. He can feel the beat of her pulse under his palm, the heat of her skin through her wet shorts, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t overthink it. He drives her to the motel, walks her to her second floor room, and when she unlocks the door and steps inside, she holds it open for him, her hand brushing his as he crosses the threshold.
