Ronan O’Malley, 52, has spent the last 15 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 32,000 miles a year in his dented 2018 Ford F-150, surviving on gas station coffee, pre-packaged cheese sticks, and the quiet thrill of spotting a kid with enough raw talent to make the big leagues. His biggest flaw, the one his older sister teases him about every Thanksgiving, is that he still holds a petty, all-consuming grudge against his ex-wife’s entire side of the family, even the ones who never took her side when she left him for a Lexus salesman with a spray tan and a speedboat. He hasn’t spoken to a single one of them since the divorce papers were signed, and he’d planned to keep it that way.
He’s at the Wood County Fair in northwest Ohio on a 92-degree July evening, fresh off watching a 17-year-old lefty with a 94 mph fastball strike out 12 batters in 6 innings, when he spots the homemade pie booth at the edge of the midway. The scent of baked peaches and cinnamon hits him before he reads the crumpled handwritten sign, and he veers off the path, his scouting notebook tucked under one sweat-sticky arm, his beat-up Cardinals cap pulled low against the setting sun.
The woman behind the counter is wiping flour off her forearms when he steps up, and when she looks up, he freezes. It’s Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. She was 16 the last time he saw her, wearing a neon prom dress and begging him to sneak her a beer at his wedding reception. Now she’s 40, with a streak of silver in her dark curly hair, a tiny tattoo of a peach on her wrist, and the same sharp, lopsided grin he remembered. Their hands brush when she passes him a paper plate with a slice of peach pie, and the callus on her thumb from kneading dough catches on the rough skin of his knuckle. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned.
He should leave. He knows he should leave. But she teases him first, pointing at his Cardinals cap, saying she can’t believe he still has that ratty thing, that he used to wear it to every family cookout even when his ex yelled at him for being “too casual for company.” He finds himself laughing before he can stop himself, leaning against the booth rail, the heat of the sun-warmed metal seeping through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. She doesn’t bring up his ex, doesn’t ask about the divorce. She asks about his scouting trips, about the weird small towns he’s visited, about the vintage 1970s Topps card collection she remembered he kept in a locked footlocker under his bed.
He stays for an hour, helping her carry a crate of ripe peaches from the storage cooler behind the booth when her teenaged helper bails early to ride the Ferris wheel with his girlfriend. Their shoulders press together when they heft the crate onto the counter, and he can smell vanilla extract and coconut shampoo and the faint, sweet tang of peach juice on her flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. He’s torn so sharp between longing and disgust he can barely breathe: disgust at the thought of letting anyone tied to his ex get close, longing for the first conversation he’s had in years that doesn’t revolve around pitch speeds and signing bonuses and the rising price of diesel.
When the fair closes at 10, she drags a cooler of cheap lager out to the tailgate of her beat-up silver pickup parked behind the booth, and he sits down next to her, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts to take a sip. The midway lights flicker off one by one, the distant sound of carnival music fades, and the only noise left is crickets and the low rumble of cars leaving the fairground parking lot. She leans over to brush a crumb of pie crust off his chin, and her face is 6 inches from his, her breath warm against his jaw, smelling like mint gum and baked peach. He doesn’t pull away.
She says she always thought he got a raw deal, that her cousin was an idiot to leave a guy who drove 2 hours in a blizzard to bring her soup when she had flu the first year they were married. He admits he’s been an idiot too, holding a grudge against people who never did anything to hurt him. They kiss slow, the cold of the beer can pressed between their palms, and it doesn’t feel wrong, doesn’t feel like the taboo he spent 15 years building it up to be. It feels like coming up for air after treading water for too long.
He asks her if she wants to come with him to Toledo next weekend, to watch that lefty pitch again in the regional all-star tournament. She tucks her hand into his, her calloused thumb rubbing over the back of his knuckle, and says yes. The last of the fairground neon flickers out, and the sky above them is dark and full of drifting fireflies.
