Elwood “Woody” Rainer, 53, minor league baseball scout for the Cleveland Guardians’ Double-A affiliate, had spent the last 8 years treating any kind of neighborhood socializing like a hitter treats a 2-0 curveball: swing only if you absolutely have to, and even then, think twice. His knee ached like hell from a 3-hour drive to Toledo earlier that day, where he’d scouted a left-handed pitcher with a 94 mph fastball and a habit of blowing up at umpires, and he’d only agreed to come to the August block party because his 72-year-old neighbor Milt had banged on his door holding a six-pack of bourbon barrel ale, saying if Woody spent one more Saturday holed up watching 10-year-old game tapes alone he was gonna call his adult daughter and tell her he was turning into a hermit.
Woody leaned against the beer tent folding table, scuffing the toe of his worn work boot against the cracked asphalt, his beat-up leather scouting notebook digging into the small of his back through his jeans. He was half considering bailing before Milt even got back from hitting on the retired elementary school teacher down the street when a woman carrying a tray of pulled pork sliders tripped over a kid’s discarded neon bicycle, slamming full force into his side. Three sliders went flying, one landing butter-side down on his boot, and her hand curled tight around his bicep to steady herself, her palm warm even through the thick cotton of his old Guardians hoodie.
She laughed first, a snorty, unselfconscious sound that cut off the irritated retort he’d had ready. “Sorry, sorry. Todd says I trip over thin air if I’m not looking where I’m going. I swear I’m usually less of a disaster.”
Woody recognized the last name immediately. Todd Hale was the new HOA president, the guy who’d slipped a $75 fine for unraked maple leaves under his door two weeks prior, typed up on fancy letterhead like he was issuing a federal warrant. He looked down at her, ready to make a snarky comment about her husband’s obsession with yard rules, and froze. She was wearing a cutoff Ohio State hoodie, high-waisted jeans cuffed at the ankle, scuffed white sneakers, no makeup, freckles dusted across her nose from the late summer sun. She was 12 years younger than him, easy, and her thumb was still brushing the edge of his bicep like she hadn’t noticed she was doing it.
Her name was Clara. She stayed leaned against the table next to him, close enough he could smell coconut shampoo and charcoal grill smoke clinging to her hair, and when she found out what he did for work she didn’t ask if he knew any major league all-stars, like most people did. She asked how he judged a player’s grit, if he ever passed on a guy with perfect stats just because he got the sense he’d fold when the pressure was on. He found himself pulling his scouting notebook out of his back pocket, flipping to the page he’d filled out that morning on the Toledo pitcher, pointing out his scribbled notes about the guy’s 1.2 second pickoff move and the way he’d patted his catcher on the back after a passed ball instead of yelling. Their hands brushed when they reached for the same bowl of salt and vinegar chips at the same time, and she held eye contact for a beat too long, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, when he mentioned the HOA fine.
“Todd wrote half those fines last Sunday while he was drunk watching the Browns lose,” she said, snorting, and pulled a crumpled stack of official notices out of her jeans pocket, flipping through them until she found his, emblazoned with his name in bold black font. “I’ve been slipping half of these into the kitchen shredder when he’s not looking. Yours was next in the pile.”
The sun dipped below the rooflines as they talked, most of the neighbors packing up coolers and herding cranky kids toward their houses, Milt having left an hour earlier with the retired teacher, yelling over his shoulder that he’d text Woody later. Todd was inside their house, she said, on a work call with his pharmaceutical company bosses, he took calls at every holiday, every party, every family dinner, cared more about hitting his sales quota than he did about anything else. She nodded toward the tree line at the end of the block, where fireflies were flickering low over the small creek that ran through the neighborhood. “Wanna walk down there? The frogs are loud as hell this time of year. It’s way better than standing around waiting for Todd to finish yelling at his sales team.”
Woody hesitated. He knew better. He didn’t do married women, didn’t do drama, didn’t do anything that could lead to Todd Hale showing up on his doorstep with a lawsuit and another stack of HOA fines. But his knee ached less than it had all day, and for the first time in 8 years, he wasn’t bored out of his mind talking to someone. He nodded.
They walked slow, his knee twinging when he stepped over a crack in the sidewalk, and she offered him her arm without asking, her forearm firm and warm under his hand. They sat on a fallen oak log at the edge of the creek, the sound of crickets and bullfrogs wrapping around them, and she leaned into his shoulder a little, her hair brushing his neck. She said she’d been miserable since they moved to the neighborhood 6 months prior, that Todd had promised they’d spend more time hiking, more time going to baseball games, more time doing anything besides working, and he’d broken every single promise. She turned to him, her face lit up by the soft flicker of fireflies, and reached out to touch the thin scar on his knee through his jeans, her fingers light against the fabric, asking how he’d gotten it. He told her about the college baseball injury that had ended his own playing career, the surgery that had left him with a permanent limp when it rained, the way he’d thought his life was over until the scout that had been watching him that day offered him a job.
She leaned in and kissed him then, soft, her lips tasting like lemonade and the spearmint gum she’d been chewing, and he kissed her back for half a second before he pulled away, shaking his head. “We can’t do this,” he said, quiet, so the crickets almost swallowed the words. “I don’t wanna be that guy. You don’t need the mess.”
She nodded, no hurt on her face, just a small, understanding smile. She slipped his crumpled HOA fine into his hand, her fingers brushing his palm. “Fair. I get it.”
They walked back to the block in silence, the fireflies flickering behind them. She waved over her shoulder when she turned toward her house, the porch light casting a gold glow over her hair, before she stepped inside and shut the door. Woody stood on the sidewalk for a minute, turning the crumpled fine over in his hand, before he stuffed it into his jeans pocket. He pulled his scouting notebook out, flipping to the page with the Toledo pitcher’s stats, and jotted a quick, messy note at the bottom: Clara, 41, throws left, better sense of humor than any prospect I’ve scouted this year. He tucked the notebook back into his pocket, turned toward his house, and noticed for the first time all day that the ache in his knee was almost gone.
