Moe Hargrove, 53, minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds farm system, slumps into the only empty stool at Jim’s Tap just after 9 p.m. on a sweltering July Tuesday in western Kentucky. The air inside reeks of fried dill pickles, overproof bourbon, and the kind of stale cigarette smoke that seeps into denim and stays there for days. He’s wearing a faded 2019 Reds spring training polo dotted with coffee stains, scuffed work boots caked with red infield dirt, and has a beat-up leather-bound scouting notebook tucked under one arm. He hasn’t spoken to anyone outside of a gas station attendant and a surly college summer league coach in 48 hours, and that’s exactly how he’s preferred it for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a DIII baseball coach he’d spent six months courting for a farm system coaching spot.
He orders a PBR, cracks the notebook open on the bar top, and starts scribbling notes on the left-handed pitcher he watched throw seven shutout innings that afternoon. The jukebox in the corner spits out a scratchy cut of George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning,” and a woman slides onto the stool next to him so close their shoulders brush for half a second before she leans back to flag the bartender. He tenses up, ready to mumble an apology and move, but she smells like jasmine perfume and coconut sunscreen, warm and sun-kissed, and he finds himself pausing mid-sentence in his notebook.
She orders a bourbon on the rocks, no water, and when she reaches for the napkin the bartender slides her way, her elbow knocks his pen off the bar top. She grabs it before it hits the floor, passes it to him, and her fingertips brush his calloused knuckles for a beat longer than necessary. “Saw you at the game today,” she says, nodding at the Reds logo stitched to his polo. “Arguing with Tyler, the head coach, before first pitch. Thought he was gonna blow a gasket when you told him you’d talk to whoever you wanted, whenever you wanted.”
Moe blinks. He’d written off everyone associated with that summer league as stuck-up, entitled college coaching staff, the exact kind of people he’d spent a decade avoiding. He recognizes her now, though—she was standing next to the dugout during the game, wearing a cutoff denim jacket and cowboy boots, yelling at the umpire when he called a strike on the lefty’s curveball. “Tyler’s your husband?” he asks, already knowing the answer. He’d heard the coach yell her name, Lila, when he waved to her between innings.
She snorts, swirling the bourbon in her glass. “Unfortunately. He’s been cheating on me with a 20-year-old on the university’s softball team for six months. I haven’t told him I know yet. Figured I’d wait till he signed his new contract, then drain the bank account and leave him with nothing but his stupid custom baseball glove and a stack of unpaid child support bills for our two kids.” She takes a long sip of bourbon, and Moe feels a weird twist in his chest, half disgust at the coach, half sharp, unnameable desire he hasn’t felt since he was in his 30s. He knows exactly what it feels like to be on the wrong end of that kind of betrayal, and he also knows he shouldn’t be sitting this close to a married woman, no matter how miserable she is.
He doesn’t move away, though. She teases him about the coffee stains on his notebook, asks him about the best prospect he ever scouted, laughs so hard at the story about a kid who showed up to a tryout hungover and threw a 98 mph fastball that she snorts a little, and her hand lands on his forearm, warm and steady, when she calms down. The jukebox switches to a slow Conway Twitty track, and the other patrons in the bar thin out till it’s just the two of them and the bartender wiping down glasses at the far end of the counter.
She leans in so close he can smell the bourbon on her breath, feel the heat of her shoulder pressed to his, and her voice drops to a low purr. “Tyler’s at a coaching clinic in Nashville for the next two days. I have three years of game footage of that lefty you were scouting saved on my laptop at my house, if you wanna come take a look. No pressure, obviously. I just… haven’t had this much fun talking to someone in longer than I can remember.”
Moe’s first instinct is to say no. He has a rule, a hard and fast rule, no messing with married women, no mixing business with anything personal, no letting himself get attached to anyone who could break the wall he’s built around himself. But he looks at her, at the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the smudge of dirt on her knee from kneeling in the dugout earlier that day, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and the rule feels stupid, flimsy, like a cheap baseball card left out in the rain.
He nods, closes his notebook, tucks it back into the inside pocket of his worn canvas jacket. He pays for both their drinks, leaves a $20 tip for the bartender, and holds the door open for her when they walk out into the humid July night. Fireflies blink in the trees along the edge of the parking lot, and the air is still so thick it feels like you could drink it. When they reach his beat-up Ford F-150, she laces her fingers through his, her palm warm and calloused from planting tomato plants in her backyard that morning, and he pulls her in for a slow, soft kiss that tastes like bourbon and spearmint gum.
