Manny Ruiz is 52, a minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds, and he hasn’t let himself stay in one place longer than 48 hours in eight years. It’s easier that way, he tells himself. No unpacking, no small talk, no chance of losing someone else the way he lost his wife, Elena, to breast cancer in 2015. His only consistent companions are his dented 2008 F150, a notebook full of player stats, and a cooler of Budweiser he restocks at every gas station along I-75.
He pulls off the rural Ohio two-lane at 9:17 PM, rain coming down so hard the windshield wipers can’t keep up, the neon sign for The Pinch Bar & Grill flickering like a dying firefly. The parking lot is half empty, save for a few pickups and a minivan with a travel baseball sticker plastered across the back window. He shakes rain off his worn ball cap as he walks in, the scent of fried pickles and burnt pretzel salt wrapping around him, Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” warbling from the jukebox in the corner. He grabs the last empty stool at the far end of the bar, orders a draft Bud, and flips open his notebook to jot notes on the 17-year-old shortstop he just watched hit three home runs in the high school playoff game across town.
He’s halfway through scribbling a note about the kid’s foot speed when a stack of napkins goes flying off the bar next to him, knocked over by a harried barback hauling a case of seltzer. A woman in a faded denim jacket and rain-soaked leather boots shifts closer to avoid the mess, her forearm brushing his for half a second, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand lotion and rain on asphalt. He looks up, and his throat goes tight. It’s Lila Carter, widow of Jake Carter, his best friend and double-play partner from their 1998 minor league stint in Toledo. He hasn’t seen her since Jake’s funeral in 2013.
She blinks, then grins, the same gap between her two front teeth he remembers from all those post-game cookouts at Jake and Lila’s tiny apartment. “Manny Ruiz? I’d know that scar above your eyebrow anywhere. You got that sliding into second against the Mud Hens, tried to play it off like you didn’t need stitches till you passed out in the locker room.” She slides onto the stool directly next to him, knees brushing his under the bar when she leans in to grab her half-empty glass of pinot noir, and he freezes for half a second, guilt coiling tight in his gut. He’d always thought Lila was beautiful, back when they were all in their 20s, but he’d never dared let himself look too long, never dared admit it out loud. It felt like a betrayal of Jake, back then, and now it feels like a betrayal of both Jake and Elena.
He tries to play it cool, nods, takes a long sip of beer. “Lila. What are you doing out here?” She laughs, tapping the travel baseball sticker on her phone case. “My son Jax is the catcher for the team that just lost to the school you’re scouting. I drove out to watch him play, then the rain hit.” Their knees stay pressed together under the bar, neither of them moving away, and she holds eye contact a beat longer than polite when she asks what he’s been up to all these years. He tells her about Elena, about the scouting job, about how he spends most of his nights alone in motels eating microwave popcorn. She listens, no pity, just nods, says she spent seven years after Jake died working two jobs to put Jax through travel ball, didn’t go on a single date the whole time, thought it meant she didn’t love Jake enough if she let herself be happy with someone else.
The county’s road alert pings on both their phones ten minutes later, warning that the low water crossing three miles down the road is flooded, no through traffic for at least two hours. Lila leans in a little closer, shoulder pressed to his now, when she points at the stat sheet in his notebook, her fingertips brushing his wrist as she tells him what she knows about the shortstop he’s scouting, how the kid works a part-time job at a feed store to pay for his own batting lessons. The guilt coiled in his chest loosens, slow, like a fist unclenching. He’d spent so long running from any kind of connection that he’d forgotten what it felt like to talk to someone who got it, someone who knew what it was like to lose the person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with.
They split an order of fried pickles, talk until the jukebox cycles through three old country albums, until the rain slows to a soft drizzle. When the second road alert comes through saying the flood has receded, he walks her to her minivan, holds the door open for her, rain misting down on both of them. She pauses before climbing in, leans up and kisses his cheek, warm and soft, and slips a crumpled napkin into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “You’re scouting the tournament in Dayton next weekend, right?” she says, grinning. “I’ll save you a seat next to me behind home plate. Don’t be late.”
He nods, watches her pull out of the parking lot, taillights fading into the mist, before he pulls the napkin out of his pocket. Her phone number is scrawled across it in blue ink, next to a tiny doodle of a baseball. He twists the key in his F150’s ignition, turns up the Merle Haggard on the radio, and pulls onto the wet road, already counting down the six days till he gets to Dayton.
