Javier “Javi” Ruiz, 53, leans against a weathered cedar picnic table at the west Texas town’s annual summer beer garden festival, sweating through the back of his faded Frisco RoughRiders cap. A lukewarm IPA sweats in his left hand, the other curled around the tattered spiral scouting notebook he refuses to replace with any of the fancy apps the younger scouts swear by. He drove three hours that afternoon to scout a 16-year-old lefty pitcher with a 92 mph slider and a habit of chewing sunflower seeds so loud you could hear him in the dugout bleachers, and he’s got a two-hour drive back to his temporary rental once he finishes his drink. He’s got no plans to stick around, no interest in small talk, hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since his wife died of breast cancer seven years prior, convinced any kind of romance at his age is either sad or tacky, especially with someone significantly younger.
The first contact is accidental. She trips over a folded lawn chair at his feet, half her frozen margarita sloshing over the rim of the plastic cup to land cold and tart on his bare forearm, lime and salt sticking to the fine dark hair there. She’s carrying a stack of volunteer sign-up sheets, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with one thin strand of silver at the temple, wearing cut-off denim shorts and a parks and rec department hoodie tied around her waist, 38 if he had to guess, the kind of woman who spends her weekends hauling mulch for community gardens and coaching rec league t-ball. She apologizes so fast the words tumble over each other, dabbing at his arm with a crumpled paper napkin, her fingers warm and calloused where they brush his skin. He’s annoyed for half a second, then he spots the tiny silver baseball stud in her left ear, and the irritation melts into something he hasn’t felt in years, something hot and tight in his chest he immediately tries to stamp out.
He fights the pull the entire time. He tells himself she’s just being nice, that he’s old enough to be her dad almost, that the people in this small town would talk if they saw them hanging around each other, that he’s betraying his wife’s memory even thinking about asking for her number. The desire wars with that low, sharp guilt, the disgust he feels at himself for even being attracted to someone so much younger, for wanting to ditch his drive home just to spend more time with her. When she tugs lightly on his wrist, her hand fitting perfectly in the gap between the calluses on his knuckles from years of gripping baseball bats and spiral notebook spines, and asks if he wants to walk down to the creek behind the beer garden to get away from the noise, he hesitates for three full seconds, every stubborn bone in his body screaming to say no. He says yes anyway.
The dirt path down to the creek is lit with string lights strung between oak trees, fireflies blinking low over the water, the noise of the festival fading to a low hum behind them. She kicks off her sneakers to step in the shallow, cool water, rolling up the cuffs of her jeans, and he follows suit, the creek cold against his bare ankles. They talk for 10 minutes about her son’s terrible curveball, about the 12-hour scouting road trips he takes alone where he listens to old tejano tapes and eats gas station burritos for every meal, about how neither of them thought they’d be here this summer, her newly divorced after a 10 year marriage, him still sleeping on the same side of the bed he shared with his wife. She brushes a piece of grass off his shirt when he sits down next to her on a flat sun-warmed rock, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw, and he kisses her before he can overthink it, slow, no rush, tasting like lime and tequila and spearmint gum, her hand coming up to curl in the hair at the nape of his neck.
They sit there for another hour, no more kissing, just talking, until the festival lights start to turn off and the crickets get loud. He walks her back to her beat up pickup truck parked on the edge of the field, and she scribbles her number on the back of a volunteer sign-up sheet, tucking it into the pages of his scouting notebook before he can protest, telling him to call her when he’s back in town next week to watch her son pitch. He tucks his notebook into the passenger seat of his own truck, turning the key in the ignition, grinning when he spots the tiny silver baseball sticker she stuck on his passenger side door handle before she drove away.
