Manny Ruiz is 57, a minor league baseball scout for the Tampa Tarpons, spends 200 days a year crisscrossing Florida in a beat-up 2017 Ford F-150 with a radar gun mounted on the dash and a cooler of canned IPA in the backseat. His biggest flaw, one he’ll admit to if he’s three beers deep, is that he’s held a grudge against his ex-wife Carla for 12 straight years, ever since she packed her bags and left him for a real estate agent who wore white linen pants to baseball games. He’d sworn off even casual dates after that, figured anything that felt that good was just waiting to blow up in his face. He’s home in Ybor City this week, fresh off a three-day trip scouting left-handed pitchers in Fort Myers, and spent the morning hauling fallen oak branches off the sidewalk outside the neighborhood senior center after last week’s tropical storm dumped 11 inches of rain on the area. He leans against the chipped brick wall outside his usual bar, the Hammered Lamb, cracking open a cold IPA he grabbed from the pop-up cooler the staff rolled out for cleanup volunteers, sweat sticking the hem of his faded team polo to his ribs.
The woman bumps into him so hard he sloshes beer down the front of his shirt. She’s carrying a paper plate piled high with smoked brisket, wears cutoff denim shorts, steel-toe work boots, and a neon orange volunteer vest slung over a worn band tee for a local indie folk band. A streak of gray runs through the left side of her dark hair, pulled back in a messy braid, and she’s got a smudge of dirt on her left cheek. “Shit, I’m so sorry,” she says, grabbing a crumpled napkin from her pocket and leaning in to dab at the beer stain on his chest. Her forearm brushes the scar on his left bicep, the one he got when he took a line drive to the arm his senior year of college, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and pine cleaning spray off her skin. She holds eye contact for a beat longer than polite, the corners of her mouth twitching up when he snorts and says the shirt already had enough ketchup and grass stains on it that no one’s gonna notice a little beer.
They talk for 20 minutes, leaning against that same wall, while a cover band plays old Tom Petty songs on a makeshift stage across the street. He learns her name is Lila, she’s a wildlife rehabber who moved to town last month to help with post-storm animal rescue efforts, and she’s Carla’s younger cousin. The second she says Carla’s name, Manny tenses, his hand tightening around his beer can. He’s only met Lila in passing at a wedding 15 years ago, back when he and Carla were still married, and he’d forgotten what she looked like entirely. His first instinct is to make an excuse, grab his keys, and drive home to his empty house where he can rewatch old game tapes and not have to think about the fact that he’s flirting with his ex-wife’s cousin, a woman 15 years younger than him who could have nothing in common with a guy whose entire life revolves around pitch speeds and batting averages. He can almost hear Carla’s shrill laugh when she finds out, the way she’ll call him a pathetic old creep who can’t even keep his hands off her family.
But Lila doesn’t mention Carla again. She teases him about the radar gun sticking out of his truck’s window, asks him to explain what makes a good left-handed pitcher, and leans in so close when he talks that her shoulder presses against his, her knee brushing his calf every time she shifts her weight. She hands him a carnitas taco she grabbed from the food truck parked down the block, her rough work-gloved fingers brushing his, and tells him she’s got three fuzzy baby pelicans in the garage of the rental cottage she’s staying at a few blocks away, ones she rescued after their nest blew out of a palm tree during the storm. “Wanna come see ‘em?” she asks, tilting her head, her dark eyes glinting in the golden hour light, and Manny hesitates for all of three seconds before he says yes.
They walk slow down the tree-lined street, the air still thick and humid, the sound of crickets starting to chirp over the distant music from the block party. When they get to her cottage, she fumbles with the front door lock for a second, and when she turns around to say something to him, she’s standing so close he can feel her warm breath on his jaw. She kisses him first, slow and soft, her hand coming up to rest on his chest right over the edge of his old scar, and he doesn’t pull away. He drops his half-empty beer can in the grass by the porch step, wraps his arm around her waist, and kisses her back, the heavy grudge he’s carried for 12 years feeling lighter than it has in decades, like he could drop it entirely if he wanted to.
He spends the night. He wakes up at 7 a.m. to the sound of pelicans squawking from the garage, the smell of dark roast coffee drifting from the kitchen, and Lila curled up against his side, her head on his chest. His phone buzzes on the nightstand, a text from Carla asking if he made it through the storm okay, and he deletes it without opening it, rolling over to wrap both arms around Lila, pulling her closer so he can feel the steady beat of her heart against his.
