Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 80,000 miles a year on his dented 2019 F-150, sleeping in cheap motels where the coffee tastes like burnt cardboard and the TV only picks up 3 local channels. His biggest flaw? He’s carried a chip on his shoulder the size of a catcher’s mitt since his ex-wife left him for a smooth-talking real estate broker 12 years prior, writing off every woman in his age bracket as either looking for a free meal or someone to fix their leaky faucet without paying. He’d driven 6 hours back to Tampa that Tuesday, covered in red clay from the Georgia ballfields he’d spent the weekend pacing, and headed straight for The Slider, the dive bar 3 blocks from his rental that he’d been frequenting for 8 years, the only place in town where no one asked him when he was going to “get a real job.”
He pushed through the screen door, the bell above jangling, and froze. The woman behind the bar wasn’t the usual gray-haired guy named Jimmy who called him “Skip” and gave him free peanuts. It was Lena Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the one who’d crashed on his couch for 3 months when she was 22, fresh out of design school, working at a beach T-shirt shop and eating all his frozen burritos without asking. He hadn’t seen her in 12 years, not since the day he loaded his furniture into a U-Haul and his ex had screamed at him for taking the signed Babe Ruth print Lena had gotten him for his 40th birthday.
She looked up from wiping a pint glass, smirked, and poured a Yuengling before he could open his mouth. “You still drink that swill?” she said, leaning over the bar to set it down, the strap of her faded linen tank top slipping off one shoulder, a tiny constellation tattoo visible on her collarbone he’d never noticed before. He smelled coconut shampoo, the exact same stuff she used back then, and his throat went dry.
He grunted, took a long sip, and tried to work up the anger he thought he should feel. She was family, the wrong kind of family, tied to all the screaming fights and the quiet regret he’d spent a decade running from. He should leave. He didn’t. She sat down on the stool across from him when the last regular stumbled out an hour later, rain lashing against the windows, the local weather alert blaring on the bar TV about flash floods in the suburbs. They talked about the old scouts he used to road trip with, the mid-century furniture she’d been refinishing since her husband died of a sudden heart attack 6 months prior, the way her sister still posted unhinged keto recipes on Facebook that no one bothered to comment on. He reached for the bowl of salted peanuts between them, his calloused, clay-streaked hand brushing hers, and she didn’t yank away, held his eye contact for three full beats, her cheeks pink under the flickering neon beer sign.
“Jimmy called in sick with a sinus infection today,” she said, when the clock hit 11, flipping the closed sign on the door and locking it. “My car’s in the shop, the transmission gave out last week. I was gonna call an Uber, but the rates are jacked to hell because of the rain.” He offered to drive her before he thought better of it. The ride to her apartment was quiet, the wipers slapping fast against the windshield, the radio playing old 90s country he used to blast on cross-country scouting trips. When he pulled into her driveway, she didn’t reach for the door handle.
“I always had a crush on you, you know,” she said, soft enough he almost didn’t hear it over the rain drumming on the roof. “Back when you were with my sister. I never said anything. You were happy. Or at least, you looked happy, before she started nagging you every week about quitting scouting to get a desk job.” He stared at her, the orange streetlight bleeding through the window, gilding the ends of her dark wavy hair, and admitted he’d always thought she was the only one in her family that ever bothered to ask him what he wanted out of life. She leaned across the center console then, her hand warm on his forearm, calloused from sanding dining table edges for hours, and kissed him, the faint taste of peach hard seltzer on her lips, and he didn’t pull away.
He followed her up the wooden steps to her apartment, the screen door creaking behind them, and didn’t think about his ex, or the 6 a.m. flight he had to catch to Des Moines the next day, or all the stupid, self-protective rules he’d made for himself to avoid getting hurt again. She flipped on the kitchen light, and he spotted his old signed Babe Ruth print, framed perfectly above her velvet couch, the one he’d left in the house when he moved out because his ex had threatened to burn it if he took it. She grabbed two cold bottles of beer from the fridge, popped the caps on the counter edge, and handed one to him, her fingers brushing his palm as he took it. He set his beer down on the linoleum counter, wrapped one arm around her waist, and pulled her close, the sound of the rain beating against the kitchen windows drowning out every other thought in his head.
