Manny Ruiz, 53, minor league scout for the Kansas City Royals farm system, pulls into the gravel lot of Mac’s Taphouse outside Sumter, South Carolina, rain pouring so hard his wipers can barely keep up. He just spent three hours on a rusted metal bleacher watching a 17-year-old lefty throw 92 mph, one wild pitch nailing a port-a-potty mid-inning so hard the door flew open and a kid ran out screaming, covered in blue toilet chemical. He’s damp, sore in his left knee from a 1998 college ACL tear, and just wants a cold IPA and fried okra before driving back to his roadside motel 20 minutes west.
He slides onto the scuffed vinyl stool at the far end of the bar, nods at the figure wiping down glasses, but it’s not Mac, the owner he’s known for 12 years. It’s a woman in a faded Pearl Jam tee, high-waisted jeans, a silver hoop through one nostril, dark hair pulled back in a messy braid stuck through with a wooden paintbrush. She smirks when he asks where Mac is, says he’s in the back icing a herniated disc, she’s his niece Lila, in town from Asheville for a month helping out while her mom recovers from knee surgery. She slides his IPA across the bar, her forearm brushing his calloused one, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand soap and citrus perfume, sharp and sweet over the bar’s mix of fried pickles and cheap bourbon.
He cracks a joke about the port-a-potty incident, and she laughs so hard she snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth. They chat for 20 minutes while the bar empties out, the high school seniors playing beer pong in the back pile into a dented pickup and peel out, the rain picking up even more, hammering the tin roof so loud they have to lean in closer to hear each other. She sits down on the stool next to him when there’s no one else left to serve, her knee brushing his denim-clad one, and he tenses up for half a second before relaxing. He notices the fleck of cadmium red paint on her left thumb, asks about it, she says she’s an elementary school art teacher, spent that morning helping her cousin’s 8-year-old paint a birdhouse for a 4H competition.
The internal conflict hits him so hard he almost chokes on his beer. He’s spent 8 years ripping every guy he knows who dates someone more than 10 years younger, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old realtor when he was 45, calling him “boring and stuck in the past.” He’d sworn he’d never be the guy leering at women half his age, the creep who buys 20-somethings shots to make up for his receding hairline and bad knee. But Lila’s asking to look at his scout notebook, full of scribbled velocity stats and dumb doodles of players he’s scouted, and she leans in so close her braid falls over his shoulder, he can feel the heat of her arm pressed to his, and he can’t bring himself to pull away. She teases him about how seriously he takes his notes, says guys her age never write anything down except their gym schedules and their weed dealer’s number.
Mac yells from the back that he’s locking up, the county just announced the back roads are flooded, Manny can’t drive 20 minutes to his motel without risking hydroplaning into a ditch. He offers Manny the pullout couch in the back apartment, no charge, says he owes Manny for hooking his nephew up with free Greenville Drive tickets last summer. Manny hesitates, glances at Lila, who nods, grinning, says the couch is way more comfortable than the motel’s lumpy mattresses, she slept on it last week when she got too drunk to drive to her mom’s. He agrees, half relieved, half terrified he’ll do something stupid he regrets.
He wakes up at 7 the next morning, sun streaming through the apartment’s screen door, his knee only a little sore from the couch springs. Lila’s sitting on the porch step, barefoot, wearing an old UNC hoodie, holding two chipped mugs of coffee. She holds one out to him when he steps outside, steam curling up from the rim, and he takes it, their fingers brushing for longer than necessary. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t remind himself she’s 27, doesn’t worry about what his buddies back in Kansas City would say if they saw him. He sits down next to her on the warm wooden step, takes a sip of the coffee, perfect and bitter just how he likes it, and rests his hand lightly on her bare ankle where it’s tucked under the edge of the step.
