Jax Tull, 59, spent 27 years as a minor league scout covering the Deep South, logging 30,000-plus miles a year in dented pickup trucks, eating gas station burritos, and betting on which 17-year-old shortstop could hit a 95-mile-an-hour fastball out of a rickety high school field. His biggest flaw, as his 13-year-old granddaughter never tired of telling him, was that he’d turned into a hermit after his wife Lorna died seven years prior. He’d skipped every community cookout, every holiday parade, every church potluck, convinced the only thing small-town social events were good for was spreading gossip about who was dating who after their spouse passed. He only showed up to the Fourth of July park cookout because his granddaughter had threatened to stop letting him come to her softball games if he bailed again.
He was leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, half-empty can of cheap beer in one hand, staring at the kids chasing each other with glow sticks, when Elara tripped over a rolling cooler at his feet. She was the new town librarian, 56, moved to town three months earlier from New Orleans, and he’d only ever seen her through the library window when he dropped off the stacks of westerns Lorna had left behind. She was carrying a tray of peach cobbler sloshing in tinfoil pans, and one sloshed over the edge, sticky sweet juice splattering the sleeve of his faded 2019 Braves flannel.
She swore soft, leaning in so fast he caught a whiff of jasmine perfume and grilled peaches on her breath before he could step back. She dabbed at the sticky spot with a crumpled paper napkin, her fingers brushing his forearm through the thin flannel, and he froze. No one had touched him that casually, that intentionally, in years. He opened his mouth to say it was fine, no harm done, but she looked up at him, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners, and held his gaze a full three seconds longer than polite, like she was reading the scouting report he kept tucked in the back of his head for every person he met.
He hated himself for the jolt he felt low in his gut. He’d spent seven years telling himself he was done with that kind of thing, that dating after Lorna was a betrayal, that he was too old, too set in his ways, too grumpy to bother with anyone new. But she didn’t step back when she was done dabbing at the stain, stayed close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, the smudge of charcoal on her thumb from the sidewalk chalk the kids had left out. She nodded at the World Series ring on his left hand, the one he’d gotten when a shortstop he’d scouted out of a tiny high school in southern Georgia won the whole thing with the Astros in 2022, and asked how he’d earned it.
They talked for 40 minutes, leaning against that picnic table, while the sun dipped below the oak trees and the first test firework popped overhead. She told him she’d grown up going to minor league games with her dad in Baton Rouge, that she still had a stack of 1990s minor league trading cards taped to the back of her desk at the library. He told her about driving 12 hours through a hurricane to see a left-handed pitcher throw a perfect game in a rain-soaked field in Mississippi. Their shoulders brushed every time one of them shifted, and he didn’t pull away. He didn’t even think about pulling away.
When the main fireworks show started, everyone moved to the open grass at the center of the park, and she followed him when he found a spot far from the screaming kids. She sat so close their knees pressed together through their jeans, and when a particularly loud red firework exploded overhead, she flinched a little, leaning into his side for half a second, her hand resting light on his forearm. He didn’t move. He could feel the heat of her through his shirt, the faint tremor in her fingers from the noise, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting to be close to someone who wasn’t Lorna.
When the last firework faded, leaving streaks of purple smoke in the dark sky, she stood up, brushing grass off her jeans, and asked if he was serious when he’d mentioned the old minor league stadium on the edge of town that was being restored. He said he was, offered to show her around next weekend, he knew the guy running the restoration, could get them in after hours when no one else was there. She grinned, typing her number into his beat-up flip phone before he could second guess the offer.
He walked her to her beat-up forest green Subaru, the back window plastered with cat rescue stickers and a minor league team decal he hadn’t seen since 1998. Before she climbed in, she plucked a white daisy from the flower bed next to the picnic area, tucked it into the buttonhole of his flannel, and told him not to be late next Saturday. He stood there for ten minutes after she drove off, holding the half-eaten slice of peach cobbler she’d pressed into his hand before she left, watching her taillights fade down the two-lane county road, the daisy still tucked in his shirt, sweet-smelling and soft against his throat.
