Manny Ruiz, 53, a Midwest League minor league scout who’s logged 180,000 miles on his beat-up Ford F-150 in the last four years, parked three blocks away from the southern Illinois peach festival crowd on a humid July evening, determined to avoid any run-ins with the high school ex who’d dumped him the night of their senior prom 33 years prior. He’d spent decades boycotting every local event in this town, only stopping long enough to scout the farm team’s home games before hightailing it to the interstate motel 20 miles west, too stubborn to let go of the petty grudge he’d carried half his life. The dive bar he ducked into smelled like fried cheese curds and old beer, the vinyl booths sticky with spilled soda, and he claimed the last empty bar stool, ordering a $3 lager and propping his scouting notebook on the counter next to his sun-faded ball cap.
Ten minutes later, she slid onto the stool two spots over, her shoulder brushing his when she reached for a stack of paper napkins by the register. He caught the scent first: ripe, sun-warmed peach and coconut sunscreen, mixed with the faint tang of lemon. When he glanced over, he recognized her immediately: Lila Marquez, his ex’s younger cousin, the quiet kid who used to bring him frozen lemonade when he coached the local 12U team the summer before he left town. She was 49 now, silver streaks threading through her dark wavy hair, calluses on the fingertips of the hand she wrapped around her seltzer with lime, a smudge of peach filling on the side of her jaw. She held his gaze for three full seconds before a slow, teasing grin spread across her face, and she shifted her stool closer, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh under the bar.
He tensed up first, half ready to grab his notebook and bolt. Every part of his stupid, long-held grudge screamed that anyone related to his ex was off limits, that talking to her would only dig up old garbage he’d spent decades burying. But she leaned in, her voice low over the hum of the jukebox playing 90s country, and said she’d seen his name in the local paper half a dozen times over the last three years, whenever he came through to scout the team’s left-handed prospects, and had always wanted to say hi. She laughed when he complained about the 19-year-old lefty he’d watched blow three saves the night before, her hand brushing his forearm when he joked that the kid’s curveball was so wild it could take out a sparrow at 50 feet. He found himself leaning in too, his shoulder pressed to hers, forgetting all about the grudge, forgetting all about the ex, forgetting that he’d planned to be back at his motel by 9 p.m. to go over scouting reports.
When the bartender called last call, she wiped the peach smudge off her jaw with the back of her hand and invited him back to her festival pie stand, said she had a fresh peach pie still sitting on the warmer, no one else around to help her eat it. He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the small town gossip mill, thinking about how his ex would lose her mind if she found out they were hanging out, then he grabbed his notebook and cap and followed her out the door. The street was mostly empty, string lights strung between the oak trees casting golden streaks across the pavement, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant sound of the festival’s closing fireworks. She unlocked the back of the small wooden stand, pulled out two paper plates and a plastic fork, and cut him a thick slice, the crust flaky, the filling sweet and warm enough to make his eyes widen when he took the first bite.
She leaned against the counter next to him, their faces six inches apart, and when he wiped a crumb of pie crust off the corner of her mouth with his thumb, she leaned in and kissed him, slow and soft, the faint taste of lime seltzer and peach on her lips. They sat on the tailgate of her pickup truck for an hour after that, splitting the rest of the pie, talking about all the years they’d missed, all the times she’d seen him at the ballpark and been too shy to say hello, all the times he’d driven past her family’s peach orchard and wondered if she still lived in town. When he finally got in his truck to leave, he tucked the crumpled festival flyer she’d scribbled her phone number on into the front pocket of his scouting notebook, right next to the report for that wild lefty he was coming back to watch in two weeks.
