Javi Ruiz is 53, a minor league baseball scout who spends 10 months of the year crisscrossing the Midwest in a dented 2018 Ford F-150, sleeping in cheap motels and eating more gas station burritos than any doctor would recommend. His biggest flaw, per his next door neighbor Marnie, is that he’s spent the seven years since his wife left for Phoenix acting like any interaction that doesn’t involve a radar gun or a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher is a waste of time. He’d avoided Marnie’s invites to the town’s annual chili cookoff for weeks, right up until she showed up on his porch at 2 p.m. Saturday holding his favorite IPA and threatened to stop feeding his hound when he was on the road if he didn’t come.
He’d been leaning against an oak tree at the park edge, half listening to old men argue about high school football, when he spotted her. Clara, the new librarian who’d moved to town three months prior. He’d run into her once before, when he dropped off a 22-year overdue copy of *The History of Minor League Ball in Ohio* he’d found in his late dad’s garage. She’d laughed so hard at the $132 late fee that she snort-laughed, then waived the whole thing if he promised to bring her a bag of the salted roasted peanuts he buys in bulk at Florida spring training. He’d forgotten, of course.
She leaned against a picnic table, jean boots kicked out, holding a plastic cup of sweet tea, her dark braid dotted with stray oak leaves. She caught his eye before he could slip away, held contact two full beats longer than casual, then crooked a finger at him. He sighed and walked over, his boot kicking a stray cornbread plate on the way. When he stopped next to her, his shoulder brushed hers, light and accidental, and he caught whiffs of lavender lotion, smoky chili hanging over the park, and cinnamon from the churro stand 20 feet away.
“Looks like you still owe me peanuts, Ruiz,” she said, grinning, and the back of his neck heated up like it hadn’t since he was a kid sneaking into minor league games back in San Antonio. He mumbled an excuse about being busy unpacking, then offered her a taste of the habanero and smoked brisket chili he’d thrown together that morning. She took a bite, chewed half a second, then coughed so hard her eyes watered. He handed her his half-drunk IPA without thinking, their fingers brushing when she grabbed it, her skin warm and calloused at the tips from turning book pages, holding the contact a full beat before she took a sip.
For 40 minutes they wandered between booths, teasing the mayor over his lumpy too-sweet chili, him telling her about a 17-year-old Iowa pitcher who threw 97 mph but cried every time he struck someone out, her telling him about the 8-year-olds who showed up to the library every Wednesday for nothing but dinosaur books and baseball cards. He kept forgetting he was supposed to be annoyed to be there, kept forgetting he’d spent seven years telling himself he was too old, too set in his ways, too worn out from travel to let anyone get close.
The rain hit without warning, a hard fast autumn downpour that sent everyone running for cover. He grabbed her hand without thinking, laced their fingers together, pulled her under the old feed store awning next to the park. They were pressed shoulder to hip, his jacket damp from the first drops, rain drumming on the metal awning loud enough to drown out the park yelling. She tilted her head up, rain dots on her cheekbones, and grinned. “You gonna invite me over for those peanuts, or am I gonna have to enforce that late fee after all?”
He didn’t hesitate. They ran to his truck laughing, rain soaking through their shirt backs, the case of spring training peanuts rolling around in the back seat. They ate peanuts on his screened porch, watching rain run off the oak trees in his yard, and he put on the old Tito Puente record his mom gave him when he moved to town. She leaned her head on his shoulder 10 minutes later, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t make an excuse to get up, just wrapped his arm loose around her waist, his calloused hand resting light on the soft denim of her jeans. When she tilts her chin up to kiss him, he tastes sweet tea and chili and faint peanut salt on her tongue, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t make an excuse to leave.
