Roland Voss, 59, minor league baseball scout for the Midwest League, spent 12 years avoiding every community event in his tiny northwest Ohio hometown. His ex-wife organized most of them, and he held a petty, unshakable grudge against her for leaving him for a high school agriculture teacher the second he signed his first full-time scouting contract. He spent 10 months a year on the road, sleeping in motel beds, eating gas station burritos, watching 19-year-old kids throw fastballs hard enough to shatter cinder blocks, and convinced himself that was all he needed.
His 2008 F150 died 20 feet from the entrance of the town’s annual summer cookoff, and he had no choice but to push it to the curb next to a row of food trucks. Humidity hung thick enough to stir into sweet tea, charcoal smoke stung the back of his throat, and distant shrieks of kids chasing each other on the playground made his temples throb. He popped the hood, stared at the engine like it had personally insulted him, and reached for his phone to call a tow when a cold can of lager pressed into the side of his neck.
He jumped, turned, and found a woman with sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek, and a familiar smirk. She wore a faded hot honey food truck t-shirt, cutoff shorts showing a constellation of freckles on her thighs, and work boots caked in barbecue sauce. “Roland, right?” she said, leaning against his truck’s fender, her shoulder brushing his bicep. The scent of jasmine perfume and smoked paprika curled off her, sharp and sweet enough to cut through grill smoke. “I’m Marnie. Lila’s cousin. You snuck me a beer at your wedding 15 years ago, when everyone yelled at me for being underage.”
He blinked, remembered. She’d been 20 then, lanky, nervous, hiding in the back of the reception hall. Now she was 35, sharp, confident, holding his gaze a beat longer than strictly polite. He hesitated, glancing past her to the grill where he knew his ex would be flipping burgers, and Marnie laughed, a low, warm sound that loosened his chest. “Relax. She bailed 20 minutes ago to pick up three more tubs of potato salad. Half the town showed up unannounced. I called the tow truck for you already, by the way. They’re backed up, said it’ll be at least an hour.”
He had no good excuse to leave, so he popped the beer tab and leaned back against the truck next to her. They talked for 45 minutes straight, no lulls. She told him she ran the hot honey truck out of Cincinnati, spent half the year traveling to food festivals across the Midwest, just got out of a four-year relationship with a dentist who hated her being gone so often. He told her about the 19-year-old lefty he’d scouted out of rural Iowa two weeks prior, who threw 97 miles an hour and once launched a fastball straight through the dugout wall during warmups. When he told her the kid’s coach screamed so loud he lost his voice for three days, she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and her hand landed on his forearm, warm and steady, for three full seconds. He felt the heat of her palm through his thin cotton work shirt, and for a second forgot how to breathe.
Part of him screamed this was wrong. She was his ex-wife’s cousin, for Christ’s sake, he’d spent 12 years actively avoiding anyone tied to that part of his life, he should make an excuse and walk home. The other part hadn’t felt this light, this seen, since before the divorce. He’d gotten so used to talking about nothing but pitch counts and ERA with other scouts, he forgot what it felt like to have someone actually listen when he talked about the parts of the job he loved: the way light hits the field at dusk, the crack of the bat on a perfect hit.
The tow truck driver called, said he was 10 minutes out. Marnie leaned in, so close her mouth almost brushed the shell of his ear, her breath warm against his skin. “I got a room at the motel on the edge of town,” she said, quiet enough no passing stranger could hear. “No one’s gonna know if you swing by later. No strings. No pressure. I just like talking to you.”
He hesitated half a second, thought about the grudge he’d carried for 12 years, the stupid rules he’d made for himself to avoid getting hurt again, then nodded.
He showed up at her room at 8:30, holding a six pack of that same lager and a jar of wild blackberries he’d picked on the side of the road on his way over. The window was propped open, crickets chirped loud from the field behind the motel, and the air smelled like cut grass and her jasmine perfume. When she leaned in to lick a smudge of hot honey she’d left on his jaw earlier that afternoon, he forgot every stupid grudge he’d carried for 12 years.
