Jax Marlow, 52, had spent 12 years as a minor league baseball scout, crisscrossing the Southeast in a dented 2014 F-150, surviving on gas station coffee, cold draft beer, and the quiet thrill of spotting a kid with raw talent no one else had noticed. His biggest flaw, one he’d leaned into hard after his divorce seven years prior, was a rigid, unbreakable rule: no personal entanglements with anyone even tangentially connected to the league. His ex-wife, who’d worked in the league’s marketing department, had left him for a rival scout he’d considered a friend, and he’d decided the risk of mixing work and anything resembling intimacy wasn’t worth the eventual crash. He’d stuck to that rule strictly for the 18 months he’d been stationed in the small Gulf Coast Florida town, even when the waitstaff at his regular oyster bar slipped him their numbers, even when the team’s administrative assistant brought him homemade chocolate chip cookies every other Friday.
He was perched on his usual stool at that same bar at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday, boots propped on the chipped wooden lower rail, when she walked in. The jukebox in the corner was spitting out old Merle Haggard, the scratch of the record barely audible over the clink of oyster shells being tossed into a metal bucket behind the bar. He recognized her instantly: Lila, the league’s new compliance officer, the woman he’d been avoiding for three weeks straight ever since she’d sent a formal email saying she needed to audit his last six months of expense reports. He’d fudged more than a few of those, writing off bar tabs as “scouting meals” and the occasional fishing trip as “community outreach with local coaching staff”, and he’d rather drive three hours to scout a rec league t-ball team than sit through a meeting where she called him out on it.
She paused by the bar for a second, scanning the half-empty room, and their eyes locked. He looked away fast, staring down at the frosty beer mug in his hand, the cold seeping into the calluses on his palm, and he could feel the tips of his ears heating up like he was a 16 year old kid caught staring at the cheerleading squad. He heard her order an oyster shot and a draft of the same IPA he was drinking, and then she sat down two stools away, far enough to be polite, close enough that he could smell the coconut sunscreen and vanilla lotion on her skin over the smell of fried grouper and brine from the raw bar.
Ten minutes passed before she spoke, her voice low and rough around the edges, like she’d spent all day yelling over the noise of high school baseball fields. “Nice writeup on that left-hander from Port St. Lucie,” she said, and he glanced over to see her swirling the oyster shot in its small glass, salt sticking to the rim. “‘Curveball that could make a preacher cuss’? I laughed so hard I spilled coffee on my boss’s desk when I read that.”
Jax blinked, tensing up half out of habit, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to pivot to the expense reports. “You read my scouting notes?” he said, taking a long sip of beer to buy himself time.
“Every single one,” she said, shifting one stool closer, her knee brushing his under the bar when she settled in. She didn’t pull away. He didn’t either. “Most of the scouts around here write like they’re filling out a grocery list. You actually pay attention. Noticed you stayed late after the game today, too, talking to the kid’s grandma about how he grew up playing catch in the trailer park yard. Most guys would’ve left as soon as the final pitch was thrown.”
The bartender slid her beer over a little too hard, and it knocked against Jax’s mug, sloshing a little over the side. They both reached to steady it at the same time, and their hands brushed. He felt the rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from gripping a hammer, and she huffed a small laugh when he flinched like he’d been shocked. “Fixed my screen door this morning,” she said, wiggling her fingers, chipped clear polish and all. “Haven’t had time to sand the blister down.”
He relaxed after that, the tight knot in his shoulders loosening a little as they talked. She told him she’d grown up on a cattle farm in central Alabama, played college softball before a torn ACL ended her career, took the compliance job after her ex-husband, a high school baseball coach, left her for a 22 year old athletic trainer. He told her about the divorce, about the kid he’d scouted in Iowa who showed up to a tryout in cowboy boots and threw a 94 mile per hour fastball, about how he’d almost quit scouting two years prior when a kid he’d spent six months mentoring got injured in a car crash and never played again.
They shared a plate of fried pickles, and by the time the bartender flipped the “closed” sign on the door, the parking lot outside was dark, the air warm and thick with the smell of jasmine from the hedges lining the sidewalk. Jax reached for his truck keys in his pocket, half-expecting her to say goodbye, half-hoping she wouldn’t.
“I live ten minutes from here,” she said, leaning against the brick wall of the bar, her shoulder brushing his. “Got a bottle of 12 year bourbon on my counter that’s way better than the cheap swill we’ve been drinking. You wanna come over?”
Jax paused for half a second, the rule he’d lived by for seven years ringing in the back of his head, the fear of getting burned again flaring up fast, quiet and sharp. Then he looked at her, the way the streetlight hit her hair, the small smile playing on her lips, and he shook his head, laughing a little at how stupid that rule felt all of a sudden. He slipped his keys back into his pocket, and followed her to her rusted silver pickup, his boots scuffing the warm asphalt right next to hers.
