Manny Rios, 53, a minor league scout for the St. Louis Cardinals system, slouched into the vinyl bar stool at The Bullpen just as a mid-October thunderstorm split the southern Indiana sky. He’d spent three hours that afternoon watching a 19-year-old lefty from Evansville throw 93 mile-per-hour fastballs with a curve that dropped like a cinder block off a roof, and he was still buzzing. The bar smelled like fried dill pickles, stale beer, and the damp wool of his frayed Cardinals hoodie, the same one he’d refused to replace for 11 years even when the cuffs wore thin enough to see through. His biggest flaw, the one his late wife used to nag him about, was that he held grudges harder than he held onto scouting reports, the kind that festered for years even when he forgot the original reason for the fight. He’d not spoken to his old best friend Jake in a decade, over a stupid argument about that very lefty’s draft stock, and everyone in their shared small-town circle had made it clear Jake’s widow Lena was strictly off limits, out of respect for both the grudge and Jake’s memory after he died in a construction accident two years prior.
He was halfway through his second Pabst when the door swung open, rain gusting in behind her. Lena shook water off her dark curly hair, streaked with a thin line of silver at each temple, and kicked mud off her work boots onto the doormat. She wore faded jeans and an unbuttoned plaid flannel over a faded rescue shelter t-shirt, a thin silver chain with a tiny dog charm peeking out at the base of her throat. She spotted him immediately, paused for half a beat, then walked straight to the open stool next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his when she leaned in to flag the bartender. He could smell lavender hand cream mixed with pine-sol and the faint, earthy scent of wet dog from her shift at the shelter.
She held his gaze for three full seconds longer than casual, one corner of her mouth tugging up in a smirk he remembered from dozens of backyard cookouts a lifetime prior. “I heard you were skulking around town. Still dumb enough to wear Cardinals gear in Hoosier country, huh?”
Manny froze, his first instinct to grab his jacket and bolt. He’d avoided every event she’d been at for two years, convinced the grudge still mattered, that crossing that line would be some kind of betrayal. But then she laughed, low and warm, and he felt the tight knot of anger in his chest loosen just a little. He shrugged, took a sip of his beer. “Lefty’s worth getting booed over. Threw a no-hitter last week.”
They talked slow, at first about the storm, then about the shelter’s new litter of hound puppies she’d spent the day bottle feeding, then about Jake. She reached across the bar to grab her hard cider, her hand brushing his where it rested on the counter, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the cheap bar stools’ loose wiring. He didn’t pull away. She told him Jake had kept a framed rookie card of that very same lefty on his workbench until the day he died, told him Jake used to say he’d been an idiot for blowing up their friendship over a stupid baseball argument. Manny’s throat felt tight, the old anger melting away fast, replaced by a warm, thrumming curiosity he hadn’t felt since his wife died seven years prior.
The bar emptied out as the storm died down, the bartender wiping down the counters and nodding at them like he was giving them a quiet nudge to leave. Lena said her truck was in the shop, her place was a ten minute walk away. Manny offered his jacket to hold over their heads, his arm wrapping around her waist as they stepped out into the damp, cool air. She leaned into him, her hand resting on his hip, and he could feel the heat of her through her flannel even through his thick hoodie. When they got to her front porch, she turned to him, her hand flat on his chest right over his heart, her breath warm against his neck. “I’ve been waiting two years for you to stop being stubborn enough to talk to me.”
He kissed her slow, no rush, no pressure, her lips soft and tasting like spiced cider and cinnamon gum. She tangled one hand in the hair at the back of his neck, pulling him closer, and he forgot all about the grudge, all about the unspoken rules everyone had laid out for them, all about the early drive he was supposed to make back to St. Louis the next morning.
He woke up at dawn the next day, three scruffy rescue dogs curled at his feet on the couch, the smell of coffee and bacon drifting from the kitchen. He pulled out his phone, deleted the angry, unsent text he’d typed to Jake ten years prior and never had the nerve to send. He sipped the coffee she handed him, warm and black, and watched her laugh as a golden retriever puppy stole a piece of bacon off the counter and bolted for the living room.
