Rafe Mendez, 52, is a minor league scout for the AA Mississippi Braves, and he hasn’t let himself flirt with anyone since his divorce eight years prior. His ex-wife left him for a college shortstop he’d coached for three seasons, so he’d built a safe, small routine: drive 300 miles a week through small Southern towns, eat gas station fried chicken, sleep in generic motel rooms, and never let his personal life bleed into the job he’d fought tooth and nail to land. He’s sitting at the Dugout, a dive bar outside Dothan, Alabama, at 9 PM on a sweltering July Tuesday, boots caked with red infield clay from the juco game he just watched, Pabst sweating in front of him, scouting notebook tucked in his back pocket.
A woman sits two stools down, her elbow brushing his bicep when she sets her frayed canvas purse on the sticky bar top. He glances over, spots the #17 jersey stretched over her shoulders, same number the left-handed pitcher he’d been scribbling notes on all game wore. No wedding ring on her left hand, nails chipped pale pink, a thin scar curling around her wrist from what looks like an old farm equipment accident. She catches him staring, smirks, and raises her shot of bourbon in a lazy toast. “You the Braves scout I saw hunched over that notebook all game?”
He nods, takes a sip of his beer, and tries not to lean in when he catches the scent of coconut sunscreen and aloe on her, like she spent six hours baking in the bleachers cheering for her son. He knows the rules cold: no fraternizing with prospect family, no personal conversations that drift past contract logistics, it’s a fireable offense if the league catches wind, and he doesn’t have a backup plan this time. She shifts one stool closer, her knee brushing his under the bar, warm through the thin denim of his jeans, and introduces herself as Lila. She works double shifts at the local feed store, she says, has for 12 years, ever since Jax’s dad bailed on them right before Jax’s first Little League all-star game.
He tells her about Jax’s 94 mph fastball, the way he spots a curveball on the corner of the plate like he’s got a laser pointer built into his glove, and she leans in so close he can count the freckles across her nose, dark eyes crinkled at the corners from years of squinting into the sun at ball fields. He’s torn, sharp and hot, half of him disgusted he’s even entertaining crossing this line, the other half starved for the easy, unforced attention she’s giving him, no demands, no questions about his messy past, just quiet interest. The jukebox switches to a slow Conway Twitty track, the last of the regulars trickle out, and the bartender starts wiping down the taps for closing.
She asks if he wants to walk to her truck out back, says she’s got a cooler of iced Shiner Bock in the bed, wants to ask what the minor league circuit will actually look like for Jax without the bartender hovering. He hesitates for ten full seconds, thumb rubbing the scuffed edge of his notebook through his pocket, then nods. They step out into thick, soupy Alabama humidity, crickets chirping so loud they drown out the distant highway hum, and she slips her hand into his when they cross the potholed parking lot, her palm calloused from hauling 50-pound feed sacks, rough and warm against his.
Her truck is a beat-up 2008 F150, dented along the passenger side from a run-in with a rogue cow last winter, and she hops up on the tailgate, yanks him between her legs so his hips press against hers, her knees locked around his waist. “I know you’re not supposed to do this,” she says, breath fanning over his neck, “I won’t tell anyone. I just haven’t seen anyone look at my kid like he’s actually worth something in a long time. Not even his dad.”
He pulls the notebook from his pocket, flips to the page marked with Jax’s name, taps the big red “OFFER” he’d scrawled across the top in the seventh inning stretch. “No strings. I was gonna call his coach first thing tomorrow, tell him the offer’s on the table. Jax earned this, nothing that happens tonight changes that.”
She laughs, soft and low, and loops her arms around his neck, the hem of her jersey riding up just enough that he can feel the warm, soft skin of her lower back under his palms. The notebook is pressed between their chests, pages crinkling a little, and he can taste cherry Coke and bourbon on her breath when she tilts her chin up. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t spiral about the rules or his ex or what his boss would say if he saw him right now. He leans in, the faint tang of cut grass and diesel hanging in the air around them, and kisses her like he hasn’t let himself kiss anyone in almost a decade.
