Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent most of his adult life perched on metal bleachers in half-empty minor league stadiums, radar gun in one hand, lukewarm beer in the other, logging pitch speeds and swing mechanics for kids who still think they’re going to make the show. He’s got sun crinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes, a scar across his left eyebrow from a dugout bat fight his single A season, and a habit of bailing on things that feel too good to be true— a flaw he’s carried since he ghosted his senior prom date three days before the dance, too scared to tell her he’d been signed to a farm team and was leaving town first thing Sunday morning. He’s avoided every high school reunion since, so when he walks into the Tampa hotel bar post-scouting conference and hears that laugh, bright and a little throaty, exactly like he remembers it, he almost turns right back around.
He doesn’t, though. He leans against the bar, orders a bourbon neat, and waits for her to spot him. It takes three minutes. She’s holding a cold glass of rosé, wearing a loose linen dress the color of wild clover, silver hoop earrings glinting under the neon beer sign, same ones she wore to their senior homecoming dance. Her hair has a few streaks of silver at the roots, her shoulders are freckled, and when she walks over, her bare arm brushes his forearm on her way to pull out the stool next to him. She smells like jasmine and cut grass, warm and alive, and Manny’s throat goes dry.
“Thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth, Ruiz,” she says, sliding onto the stool, her knee knocking his under the bar on accident. She holds his gaze, no malice, just a faint, teasing smirk, and Manny can feel the old guilt curl tight in his chest, warring with the sharp, low hum of attraction he hasn’t felt in at least a decade. He’d forgotten how dark her eyes are, how when she tilts her head to the side like that, she looks like she’s reading every stupid thought running through his head.
He tells her the truth, no lies, no excuses. Tells her he was 18, stupid, scared that if he told her he was leaving, she’d ask him to stay, and he’d do it, throw away the only shot he’d ever had at baseball. Tells her he tore his rotator cuff 18 months later, never made it past A ball, fell into scouting, bounced around the southeast for 20 years, never stayed in one place long enough to have a plant, let alone a partner, lives in a little cottage outside Jacksonville now with a rescue beagle named Slider who chews his scout notes when he’s gone too long.
Lila laughs, the sound cutting over the Tom Petty track playing on the jukebox, and leans in closer, her shoulder pressing firm into his bicep so she can hear him over the crowd of reunion attendees yelling at the TV over the Rays game. She tells him she found out he left town a week after prom, her cousin was friends with the scout who signed him, she was mad for a year, then she went to college, studied horticulture, got married, had a kid, got divorced five years ago when her ex decided he’d rather chase a 26-year-old yoga instructor than stay for their son’s high school graduation. She’s in town for a botanical garden conference, popped into the reunion for ten minutes just to see if anyone she cared about was there, was just about to leave when she spotted him.
Her hand rests on the bar six inches from his, the skin on the back of it dotted with faint sun spots, her nails short, no polish, dirt still caught under the edges from a planting demo she did that morning. Manny’s fingers twitch, wanting to reach for it, and he hates himself a little for how long he spent running from this, from the one person who ever made him want to stop moving. He apologizes, quiet, raw, says he’s spent 30 years feeling like a coward, like he doesn’t deserve to even be talking to her right now.
Lila tilts her head, reaches out, and plucks the frayed minor league cap off his head, running her fingers through the gray streaks at his temple, her calloused fingertips (from trowels, from digging in dirt, he realizes) brushing his skin. “I always knew you were scared, not cruel,” she says, her voice low, her breath warm against his cheek when she leans in. “I spent a lot of years wondering what would’ve happened if you’d showed up to prom.”
Manny’s chest feels tight, like he’s just watched a kid he scouted for three years hit a walk-off home run, better, because this doesn’t come with a contract expiration date. He asks her if she wants to find out, not the prom part, the part where neither of them bails this time. She smiles, laces her fingers through his, her palm soft but firm, and slides off the stool, tucking his scuffed cap on her own head, the brim slipping down over her eyes.
They walk past the crowd of yelling reunion attendees, past the bartender wiping peanut shells off the bar, and down the quiet hotel hallway, the hum of the air conditioner mixing with the distant crack of a bat from the game still playing in the bar. Manny squeezes her hand, and when she stops outside her hotel room door, she pulls him in for a kiss, the faint taste of rosé and mint on her lips, and he doesn’t even think about running.
