Rafe Sotero is 52, a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 22 years crisscrossing the Southeast in a beat-up 2017 F-150, his backseat stacked with scout notebooks, sunflower seed shells, and a portable cooler he’s had since his divorce 8 years prior. His biggest flaw is rigidity: he eats the same gas station beef jerky and root beer for dinner every night on the road, never stays in a small town longer than 72 hours, and has a strict rule against fraternizing with anyone related to the prospects he’s evaluating. The rule came after a parent of a high school pitcher tried to bribe him with free boat storage three years back, and he’s avoided even casual small talk with family members ever since.
He’s at the Morgan County Fair in north Alabama on a crisp October Tuesday because the left-handed pitcher he’s been tracking for the Atlanta Braves’ low-A affiliate is working the fried Oreo stand between weekend scrimmages. The line snakes 15 people deep, the air thick with the smell of powdered sugar, hot oil, and diesel fumes from the Ferris wheel idling 20 feet away. When he gets to the front, the pitcher’s aunt is the one leaning over the counter to hand him his order, not the kid himself.
She’s wearing a faded Alabama football hoodie, silver hoop earrings that catch the neon pink glow of the Tilt-A-Whirl sign, and her nails are chipped deep red from helping her sister paint her porch the week before. When their fingers brush as she passes him the grease-stained paper plate, he smells jasmine hand lotion mixed with the sweet, heavy scent of fried dough, and she holds eye contact a full beat longer than necessary, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she spots the edge of his scout notebook peeking out of his flannel shirt pocket.
He mumbles a thanks, steps off to the side to lean against a splintered wooden fence, and immediately berates himself for noticing how the corner of her mouth crinkles when she laughs at a kid begging his mom for a second order. He should finish the Oreos, head back to his motel, review the pitcher’s stats, and hit the road by 8 a.m. the next day like he planned. He doesn’t do detours, doesn’t do small talk with strangers, especially not strangers related to a kid whose career he could partially control. The thought makes his skin prickle with a weird mix of disgust at his own wandering attention and sharp, unnameable desire to stay just a little longer.
The crowd thins as the 9 p.m. fireworks show draws near, and she slips out from behind the stand, wiping her hands on the front of her jeans before leaning against the fence right next to him. Their shoulders press together, the rough fabric of her hoodie rubbing against his flannel, and she doesn’t apologize for the proximity. She says her nephew told her he’d be stopping by, that the kid’s been talking about the scout from Atlanta for three weeks straight. Her voice is low, rough from yelling over fair noise all day, and when the first firework bursts overhead with a deafening boom, she leans in closer, her mouth almost touching his ear so he can hear her say she used to go to minor league games with her dad every weekend growing up, before he passed five years prior.
He can feel her warm breath on the side of his neck, and when she reaches up to brush a crumb of fried Oreo off his chin, he doesn’t flinch or pull away, like his body’s already rejected the rigid rules he’s lived by for years. He admits he almost got back in his truck right after he got his order, that he doesn’t make a habit of hanging around fairs or talking to pretty women he just met. She laughs, the sound mixing with the pop of smaller fireworks over the fairground, and says she could tell, that he’d been carrying his shoulders up to his ears like he was waiting for someone to yell at him for being there.
They talk for 40 minutes, the fireworks painting the sky blue and red and gold above them, and he learns she’s a traveling physical therapist, in town for two weeks to help her sister recover from knee replacement surgery, that she hates fried Oreos but loves the way kids light up when they take their first bite. He tells her about the time he scouted a kid in Mississippi who threw a no-hitter the day after his dog died, about the way his F-150’s AC went out last summer on a drive through Florida, about how he hasn’t been on a date in almost six years.
When the last firework fades and the crowd around them erupts in scattered cheers, she pulls a crumpled receipt out of her hoodie pocket, scribbles her phone number on the back, and slips it into the front pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing lightly against his chest through the fabric. He asks her to come to the scrimmage the next afternoon, then to get barbecue at the tiny joint he spotted on the edge of town on his drive in. She says yes, tells him she’ll be the one in the same Alabama hoodie, bringing her nephew a Gatorade before the first pitch.
He watches her walk back to the fried Oreo stand, waving at him over her shoulder, before he turns to head to his truck. The note in his pocket is crinkled and warm from her hand, and for the first time in 8 years, he’s not already mentally mapping his route out of town before he even gets to his vehicle. When he unlocks his truck door, he tosses his usual gas station jerky and root beer into the passenger seat, already planning to skip his routine dinner to pick up a slice of pecan pie from the diner down the street from his motel, just because she mentioned it was the best in the county.
