Javier “Javi” Ruiz, 51, is a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 120,000 miles on his beat-up F-150 in the last two years, chasing high school and DIII prospects across the Midwest. His only consistent companion is a tattered spiral notebook full of pitch velocity notes and swing mechanics observations, and his biggest flaw is that he’s shut down every chance at casual connection since his wife passed from breast cancer seven years prior. He tells himself he’s too busy for anything else, that letting anyone in would be a betrayal of the 22 years they had together, even when his buddies tease him for spending every off-night alone in a motel room eating microwave burritos.
He’s in northern Ohio the first week of October, following a 16-year-old shortstop with a 90 mph throw and a habit of stealing second base before the pitcher even winds up. After the kid’s fall ball win, he heads to the county fair beer tent to grab a cold lager, the cuff of his flannel still caked with infield clay, the edge of his notebook sticking out of his back pocket. The sun is dipping low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the air sharp enough to make his nose run, the smell of fried dough and grilled sausage wrapping around him. He leans against a splintered wooden post, sipping his beer, when someone drops onto the picnic bench next to him close enough that their plaid sleeve brushes his forearm.
He looks over, recognizes her immediately: Lila Marlow, the shortstop’s mom. He’s seen her at every one of the kid’s games for the last three months, always sitting in the first row of bleachers, holding a neon orange cooler full of Gatorade and orange slices, yelling encouragement loud enough to cut through the crack of the bat. She’s 38, he’d heard the other parents say, divorced three years, runs a dog grooming salon out of her garage. She grins at him, holding a can of peach seltzer, and says she’s been wondering when she’d catch him alone, that he always bolts the second the final out is called.
He’s flustered at first, fumbling with his beer can, because he’d never imagined she’d paid him any attention. He’d spent plenty of games glancing over at her, watching the way she tucks her blonde hair behind her ear when she’s cheering, the way she high fives every kid on the team after the game, but he’d written that off as harmless, nothing he’d ever act on. She teases him about the notebook, says all the parents have been guessing what he’s writing in there, that half of them think he’s an undercover cop, the other half think he’s a college recruiter who’s way too serious about his job. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he doesn’t make often, and tells her what he actually does, lets her flip through the first few pages of his notebook when she asks.
When she laughs at the doodle of a grumpy umpire he scrawled in the margin during a rain delay, she leans into his shoulder for half a second, pulls back like she didn’t even realize she did it, but her eyes don’t leave his, no awkward apology, no flustered look away. The smell of her vanilla lavender lotion mixes with the beer and fried onions from the food truck next to the tent, and he has to fight the urge to tuck the strand of hair that’s fallen in her face behind her ear. He’s torn, half of him thrumming with a warmth he hasn’t felt in years, the other half disgusted with himself for even thinking about this—she’s the mom of the kid he’s scouting, she’s 13 years younger than him, he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be enjoying this.
She asks him if he wants to walk the fairgrounds with her, says her son is with his friends riding roller coasters for the next two hours, no one to bother them. He hesitates for three full beats, ready to make up an excuse about having to call his boss, but then he sees the small, hopeful smile on her face, and he nods. They walk past the cotton candy stand, she buys a bag of the pink stuff, holds it out to him, and when he takes a bite, his lips brush her fingertips. He freezes, waiting for her to pull away, but she just laughs, licks the sugar off her own thumb, says it’s the best cotton candy in the state, her family has been coming to this fair since she was a kid.
They stop by the empty horse show arena, the stands cleared out for the night, string lights strung above the fence flickering on one by one, the distant sound of the roller coaster screams fading behind them. She leans against the wooden rail, turns to face him, and says she’s been wanting to talk to him for months, that she’d noticed him looking at her in the bleachers, thought he was too wrapped up in his notes to ever say hi. He admits he’d noticed her too, that he’d look for her in the stands before he even looked for her son on the field, tells her about his wife, about how he thought he was done feeling this kind of pull to anyone. She reaches up, brushes a fleck of dried clay off his cheek, her palm resting warm against his jaw for a beat, and tells him he doesn’t have to be alone if he doesn’t want to be.
He doesn’t overthink it, leans in, kisses her soft and slow, tastes like lager and cotton candy, tastes like something he thought he’d never get to have again. When they pull back, she’s grinning, cheeks pink, and says she was terrified he’d turn her down. He checks his watch, says they have an hour and forty minutes left before her son texts her to pick him up. She laces her fingers through his, calloused from grooming dogs, warm in his, and tugs him toward the old ferris wheel at the edge of the fairgrounds, says the view of the sunset from the top is the best in the whole county.
