Manny Ruiz is 52, a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 170,000 miles on his 2019 F-150 in the last three years, crisscrossing Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky for left-handed pitchers with enough bite on their curveball to make a college hitter swing at air. His worst flaw is that he’s turned emotional avoidance into a superpower: since his wife died in a car crash eight years prior, he hasn’t stayed in one place for more than four days, hasn’t exchanged more than ten sentences with anyone who isn’t a high school coach or a fellow scout, hasn’t even let himself look at a woman long enough to wonder what her laugh sounds like. He’s in rural western Ohio on a Friday in late April, in town to scout a 17-year-old lefty at the local high school, when he ducks into the VFW’s weekly fish fry to avoid the rain pouring off the awning of his motel.
The air hits him first: thick with fried cod grease, the faint stale tang of old cigarette smoke stuck in the wood paneling, and the sweet, sharp fizz of cheap draft beer. He grabs a paper plate stacked with cod, coleslaw, and a side of hushpuppies, claims the last open stool at the far end of the bar, and pulls out his beat-up scouting notebook, planning to knock out his notes on last week’s prospect before he eats. He’s halfway through scribbling about a shortstop from Toledo who can’t hit a slider, when a woman reaching for her bourbon on the bar knocks his elbow hard enough to make his pen skid across the page.
She apologizes immediately, her voice rough and warm, like she smokes menthols on her back porch when no one’s watching. She’s in a faded denim jacket covered in animal shelter volunteer patches, has a tiny silver nose ring that catches the light from the neon beer sign above the bar, and when she hands him a napkin to wipe the smudge off his notebook, their fingers brush for half a second. Her skin is cold from holding her glass, calloused at the fingertips, and Manny pulls his hand back fast like he’s been burned. He mumbles that it’s fine, goes back to his notes, but he can’t focus. He can smell her perfume, vanilla mixed with pine cleaner, and every time she shifts on her stool, her knee brushes his, just enough that he can feel the heat through his worn jeans.
She asks what he’s writing, and he tells her he’s a scout, in town to look at the left-handed pitcher on the high school varsity team. She snorts, says that’s her son. Manny’s stomach drops a little. He knows the unwritten rule: don’t fraternize with a prospect’s family, not if you want your evaluation to stay impartial, not if you want to keep your job. He should finish his fish, pay his tab, and walk back to his motel right then. He doesn’t.
The old jukebox in the corner blares Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues*, loud enough that they have to lean in to hear each other, and every time she laughs, he can feel the sound vibrate through the shoulder pressed against his. They talk for two hours. She tells him her name is Lorna, she runs the town’s no-kill animal shelter, she split from her son’s dad, the high school coach, three years prior after he cheated on her with the school’s guidance counselor. He tells her about his wife, about the way she used to come to every single one of his minor league games back when he was a catcher, about how he quit playing after she died and took the scouting job just to stay moving. When she catches him staring at her mouth, she smirks, doesn’t look away.
The rain stops around 9. She asks if he wants to walk her old pit bull, Mabel, back to her place three blocks away. Manny hesitates. He thinks about the scouting code, about how if anyone from the league found out he was at a prospect’s mom’s house, he’d get written up at minimum, fired at worst. He thinks about the empty motel room waiting for him, about the cold takeout he’d bought for dinner that’s sitting in his truck, about how long it’s been since he felt someone’s shoulder pressed against his. He says yes.
Mabel is 10 years old, gray around the muzzle, keeps weaving between their legs as they walk, forcing them to bump into each other every few steps. When they pass the leash back and forth, their hands brush again, longer this time, and Manny doesn’t pull away. When they get to her front porch, she leans in first, kisses him, tastes like bourbon and peppermint gum, and he kisses her back, his hands on her hips, not overthinking it for the first time in eight years.
He stays the night, wakes up to the smell of coffee and Mabel curled at his feet, Lorna sitting on the edge of the bed flipping through his scouting notebook, teasing him about his terrible handwriting. He leaves for the showcase at noon, gives her a quick kiss before he walks out, tells her he’ll be honest about her son, no favors.
He watches the kid pitch that afternoon. He throws a 92 mph fastball, has a curveball that drops off the table, only walks one batter in seven innings. Manny writes him up as a top 10 prospect in the region, sends the report to the front office that night, doesn’t mention he spent the night at his mom’s house.
He’s back in town a month later, driving three hours out of his way, a cat carrier in the passenger seat. It’s the orange tabby she’d ranted about no one wanting at her shelter, the one with one eye that she said reminded her of Mabel. He sets the cat carrier on her porch, and when she laughs and pulls him in for a kiss, he doesn’t even glance at the scouting notebook tucked in his jacket pocket.
