Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last eight years living out of a dented Ford F-150, crisscrossing the southeast as a minor league baseball scout. He’s got a scar across his left eyebrow from a college ball accident, a habit of chewing sunflower seeds even when he’s not at a field, and a stubborn rule he hasn’t broken since his ex-wife left him for a mortgage broker half his age: no frills, no distractions, no one coming home with him at the end of the night. He’s convinced softness kills a scout’s edge, that any time spent not scribbling pitch velocity stats or texting front office contacts is time he can’t get back.
He pulls into the gravel parking lot of a dive bar off I-65 outside Montgomery at 10:17 PM on a Tuesday, rain lashing the windshield so hard he can barely see the neon “BEER” sign flickering above the door. His scouting notebook is crumpled in the pocket of his windbreaker, the page for the 19-year-old lefty he watched throw seven shutout innings that night half-filled out, and he’s already dreading the three hour drive to Pensacola he’s got scheduled at 7 AM.
The bar’s empty save for the bartender, a woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair, wiping down the sticky oak bar top with a ragged rag. She’s wearing a faded 2002 Montgomery Biscuits hoodie, the logo peeling at the edges, and when he orders a Pabst, she nods, pops the cap on the counter, and slides it over without a word. He’s three sips in when he nods at her hoodie, says he was at the Biscuits game earlier that night.
She smirks, leaning against the back bar, her arms crossed over her chest. “Thought you looked like a scout. All of you carry that same tired, overcaffeinated slouch, like you haven’t slept in a bed that didn’t have a Magic Fingers attachment since 2018.” Her voice is low, rough from years of yelling over jukeboxes and drunk patrons, and when she leans forward to pass him his second beer, her forearm brushes his. He can smell lavender hand soap and fried pickle brine on her, and for half a second he forgets the rule he’s spent eight years enforcing.
They banter for an hour, her teasing him about the sunflower seed shells he’s been dropping on the floor, him telling her stories about scouting trips gone wrong, the time a kid threw a fastball that shattered his radar gun. He finds himself leaning in closer to the bar, his elbows resting on the sticky wood, and when he hands her a 20 to pay for his drinks, their fingers brush for longer than they need to. She doesn’t pull away. Her hazel eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs, and he’s suddenly hyper aware of how quiet the bar is, how the only sound is the rain hitting the tin roof and the old Hank Williams Jr track playing low on the jukebox.
He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave, to get back to his motel and finish his scouting report, when she says she’s closing up in 10 minutes, offers him a free shot of bourbon if he helps her drag the patio furniture inside before the thunderstorm picks up. He agrees before he can think better of it.
The rain is coming down sideways when they step outside, soaking through his windbreaker in 10 seconds flat. He grabs the end of a metal picnic table, she grabs the other, and when he slips on a patch of wet gravel, she reaches out, her hand wrapping around his bicep to steady him. Her palm is warm through the damp fabric, and when they both laugh, their faces are inches apart, rain dripping off the ends of their hair onto each other’s cheeks.
They get the last of the chairs inside, lock the front door, and she pours two shots of cheap bourbon, sliding one across the bar to him. They’re standing close enough that he can feel the heat coming off her, and when she tilts her head up, he kisses her, slow, no rush. He can taste bourbon and peppermint lip balm on her, and when her hand comes up to rest on the back of his neck, he doesn’t think about his rule, doesn’t think about the drive to Pensacola, doesn’t think about the scouting report he’s supposed to finish.
He stays the night in the apartment above the bar, wakes up at 6:45 AM to the smell of coffee and bacon drifting from the kitchen. She’s standing at the stove wearing his scouting hoodie, the one with the MLB logo stitched on the chest, flipping pancakes, and when she turns around, she holds up the business card he left on the bar the night before, asks if he’s coming back through next month when the Biscuits host the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. He nods, sitting down at the small kitchen table, and she slides a plate of pancakes in front of him, syrup already pooled at the edges. He glances over at his scouting notebook, sitting open on the counter next to the coffee pot, and sees that in the blank space next to the lefty pitcher’s stats, he’d scribbled her name — Maeve — in messy blue ink the night before, before he’d even thought to ask her what it was.
