Manny Ruiz, 59, has scouted minor league baseball prospects across the Southwest for 32 years, and he’d rather sit through a 12-inning loss in 105-degree heat than show up to the small-town West Texas Fourth of July cookoff. The local JUCO coach begged him, though, said there was a 17-year-old lefty with a 94-mile fastball who’d be there with his family, so Manny dragged himself over, grabbed a lukewarm Shiner Bock from the keg stand, and parked himself against a pine tree far from the crowd, faded Astros cap pulled low over his sun-cracked forehead.
He’s about to leave when he smells it: warm peach pie, buttery crust and brown sugar, the exact smell Marie used to fill their kitchen with every Fourth of July. He follows the scent to a folding table draped in red gingham, and freezes when he sees the woman behind it. Lila Marlow, 54, widow of the high school baseball coach he used to drink beer with after fall scrimmages, who died of a heart attack three years prior. She’s wiping flour off her jeans, gray-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, sun catching the gold baseball necklace she always wore, the one with her husband’s old number on it. She looks up, catches him staring, and grins, waving him over.
He hesitates for a full ten seconds, one foot already turned toward his truck, before he walks over. They start with small talk: the lefty prospect, the brutal heat, the way the local rec department forgot to order enough portable toilets this year. She hands him a sample slice of pie on a flimsy paper plate, and when their fingers brush, Manny feels a jolt go up his arm, sharp and warm, the kind of spark he hasn’t felt since he first kissed Marie outside a dive bar in 1988. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, his face hot, suddenly disgusted with himself. He’d promised himself he’d never even look at another woman like that, that Marie was the only one he’d ever want, and here he is getting flustered over a brush of fingers over a paper plate.
He tries to step back, mumble an excuse about needing to find the lefty, but she leans in, elbows on the table, so her shoulder presses lightly against his bicep, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and vanilla perfume mixing with the peach pie scent. “I used to watch you and Marie at the games, you know,” she says, soft, like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. “You’d bring her a snow cone between every other inning, even when the lines were 20 people deep. Always got her cherry, extra syrup. I told my husband once you two were the only couple I knew that actually liked each other after 20 years of marriage.”
Manny’s throat tightens. He hasn’t talked about that little ritual with anyone since Marie died. He relaxes a little, stays put, tells her the story of the time he spilled that snow cone all over her favorite white sundress, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, then made him buy her a corn dog to make up for it. Lila laughs, the sound loud and warm, and leans in closer, her arm pressed fully against his now, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin cotton work shirt. He can hear kids screaming on the bounce house behind them, the crackle of the firework setup crew testing fuses, the faint twang of a country cover band playing at the other end of the park. He still has that little voice in his head yelling that he’s doing something wrong, that he’s betraying Marie, but it’s getting quieter, drowned out by the sound of Lila laughing, the sweet taste of peach pie on his tongue.
The first firework goes off right over their heads, a burst of bright red that paints the whole sky pink, and Lila grabs his forearm instinctively, her fingers warm and firm on his sunburnt skin. She doesn’t pull away when she realizes what she did, just tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes glinting with blue and gold sparks from the next round of fireworks going off. Manny doesn’t overthink it, just lifts his thumb and wipes a smudge of peach filling off her lower lip, slow, like he’s scared she’ll flinch. She doesn’t flinch. She just smiles, and licks her lip right where his thumb was, her eyes never leaving his.
“I haven’t talked to a woman like this in 8 years,” he says, quiet, like he’s admitting something he’s ashamed of. “I thought if I even thought about anyone else, I was cheating on her.”
Lila nods, her thumb brushing the back of his hand where it’s resting on the table. “My husband told me the week before he died that if I didn’t find someone to laugh with, to eat bad pie and watch terrible baseball with after he was gone, he’d haunt me from the dugout. Yell at me from the bleachers every time I struck out on a date.”
Manny laughs, a real belly laugh, the kind that makes his sides hurt, that he hasn’t had since Marie died. He buys a whole pie from her, tells her he’s got a perfect spot to watch the rest of the fireworks on the tailgate of his truck, and she doesn’t even hesitate before she locks up her table, grabs her jacket, and follows him.
They sit on the tailgate later, passing the pie back and forth, no plates, just eating it with their fingers, watching the fireworks paint the sky purple and green and orange. She leans her head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arm around her waist, slow, like he’s still testing the waters, and she snuggles in closer, her hand resting on his thigh. He doesn’t make plans for next week, doesn’t worry about what anyone else will say, doesn’t even think about the lefty prospect he was supposed to track down. He just tastes peach pie on his lips, feels the warmth of her against his side, and listens to the last firework boom so loud it rattles the truck’s windows.
