Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent the last four years living out of a dented Ford F-150 and scouting high school and DIII baseball prospects for the Cincinnati Reds farm system, his only consistent companion a half-empty bag of sunflower seeds and a worn photo of his late wife tucked in his scouting notebook. His biggest flaw, as his older sister never tires of pointing out, is that he’s stubborn to the point of self-sabotage: he’s turned down every invite to local community events since his wife died, convinced they’re little more than sappy time drains that pull him away from the work he’s thrown himself into to avoid sitting with the quiet of his empty house. He only caves this time because his sister swears the Cuban food truck at the town’s summer street fair makes the medianoche sandwiches exactly like his wife used to, pressed crispy, tangy with mustard and dill pickles, stuffed full of slow-roasted pork.
The July sun sticks to the back of his neck like wet cloth when he walks through the fair gates, plastic cup of cheap draft beer in one hand, Reds cap pulled low to keep the glare off his face. He’s halfway to the food truck when his boot catches on a tent stake for the public library’s used book fundraiser, sending a stack of tattered baseball biographies tumbling to the asphalt. Before he can bend to pick them up, a woman’s hand brushes his, warm and calloused at the fingertips, and he looks up to see Lena Marlow, the woman who’s run the town’s used bookstore on Main Street for the last six years, the one he’s exchanged awkward, distant nods with every time he stops in to grab old sports memoirs for long road trips. She’s wearing cutoff jeans with a pale blue paint splotch on the left knee, a faded Dolly Parton t-shirt, and her dark hair is pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple. She smells like jasmine hand lotion and lemon Pledge, the same scent that sticks to the pages of the books he buys from her shop.
He stammers out an apology, and she laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the noise of the fair’s cotton candy machines and screaming kids. “Don’t worry about it,” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the din, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she reaches for a copy of Ted Williams’ *The Science of Hitting* that skittered to her feet. She holds eye contact longer than strictly necessary, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners when she nods at his Reds cap. “Bold choice, wearing that around Indians territory. You gonna get jumped by a bunch of retirees in Cleveland jerseys?”
Manny snorts, flipping through the Williams book as they stand huddled over the stack of fallen books, their knees almost touching now, the crowd of fairgoers swirling around them like water around a rock. He’s spent the last four years shutting down any even casual interest from women, convinced any kind of connection would be a betrayal of the 22 years he had with his wife, but he can’t bring himself to step away. He likes that she doesn’t ask him how he’s doing, doesn’t give him that soft, pitying look everyone else in town does when they realize he’s the widower who lives alone on the edge of town. She just asks him what the most promising prospect he’s ever scouted was, leaning in when he tells her about a 17-year-old left-hander he saw last week who throws 97 miles an hour with a curveball that drops off a table, her elbow resting on his arm when she laughs at the story about the kid who tried to slide into second base and face-planted in the dirt.
They’re walking to the food truck ten minutes later, Lena’s cherry seltzer sloshing in her cup, when a group of teen boys on skateboards comes barreling around the corner, one slamming hard into Manny’s side. He grabs Lena’s elbow on instinct to keep her from falling, pulling her close to his chest for half a second before he realizes what he’s doing, and when he looks down at her she’s tilted her chin up, her mouth parted a little, the sun catching the freckles across her nose. He kisses her before he can overthink it, slow and soft, and she tastes like cherry and bubblegum, no bitter edge of guilt settling in his chest like he expected, just a light, warm buzz that’s better than any beer he’s had all summer.
They sit on the curb outside the food truck a few minutes later, eating their medianoche sandwiches, and Lena steals a bite of his without asking, grinning when he pretends to be annoyed. He hands her his extra dill pickle without thinking, the same thing he used to do for his wife, and when she takes it, their fingers brush again. He asks her if she wants to come to that 17-year-old left-hander’s playoff game with him next weekend, says he’ll even bring her a bag of the no-salt sunflower seeds she mentioned she prefers ten minutes earlier. She says yes, and when he glances down at her left hand, no ring glints on her finger, and she catches him looking, winking and nudging his shoulder with hers. A kid runs past holding a cotton candy bigger than his head, and the fair’s sound system kicks on an old Johnny Cash song, and Manny leans back against the curb, not in a hurry to go anywhere for the first time in four years.
