Roland Voss, 54, a minor league baseball scout for the Cincinnati Reds low-A affiliate, wiped beer foam off the edge of a tap with a ratty bar towel, sweat beading under the brim of his faded Reds cap. He’d only agreed to man the beer tent at Asheville’s annual Bluegrass & Barbecue Festival for an hour as a favor to his old college roommate, who owned the local craft brewery supplying the event. For the past eight years, he’d avoided the festival entirely, ever since his ex-wife left him for a Charlotte real estate agent mid-festival, taking their dog and the vintage camper they’d spent three years restoring. He’d built a pretty solid routine in the off-season: drive back to his tiny cabin outside town, eat frozen dinners, watch old game film, and avoid anyone who might ask how he was doing.
The air reeked of hickory smoke, vinegar-based coleslaw, and citrusy IPA, the twang of a banjo carrying over the crowd of sunburnt tourists and locals. When he looked up, she was leaning on the splintered pine bar in front of him, crisp navy polo with a Buncombe County Public Health logo stitched to the chest, lanyard with her ID slung around her neck, clipboard tucked under one arm, a scowl sharp enough to cut through the thick summer humidity. He recognized her immediately: Elara Marquez, the new public health officer everyone at the diner had been complaining about for months, the woman who’d shut down three popular food trucks for cross-contamination violations and was rumored to be pushing to cut funding for the youth baseball fields he used to host spring tryouts every year. He rolled his eyes before he could stop himself.
She leaned in a little closer to be heard over the music, her elbow brushing his bare forearm where his flannel was rolled to the elbow. The scent of jasmine shampoo hit him, sweet and bright over the smoke and beer, and he froze for half a second. “I’m not here to shut you down, if that’s the look you’re giving me,” she said, grinning, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. “Your buddy already passed all my checks first thing this morning. I just need a beer before I go audit the taco truck that’s been serving raw ground beef all afternoon.”
He grabbed a cold IPA from the cooler under the bar, twisted the cap off, and slid it across to her. Their fingers brushed when she reached for it, calloused from his years of catching and gripping a radar gun, hers soft but dotted with tiny ink stains from taking notes on her clipboard. She held the contact for a beat longer than necessary, her thumb grazing the back of his knuckle, before she pulled her hand back to take a sip.
He couldn’t help the snort that escaped him. “Heard you’re trying to take our baseball fields away to build another clinic. Kids around here don’t have anywhere else to play.”
Her grin faded, and she shifted her weight, her hip brushing the edge of the bar as she leaned in again, close enough that he could see gold flecks in her eyes when the sun hit them. “No one read the full proposal,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m pulling the funding from the unused municipal golf course that’s been rotting on the west side for five years. The fields are getting a 20 percent budget increase, new dugouts, new lights for night games. The clinic is going in the old golf course clubhouse.”
He felt stupid for jumping to conclusions, his face heating up under the brim of his cap. He’d spent so many years assuming the worst of everyone who wasn’t a pitcher with a 90 mile per hour fastball that he’d forgotten how to listen. Before he could apologize, the sky opened up, fat cold rain drops slamming into the tent roof, the crowd screaming and running for cover. A gust of wind blew the side tent flap open, rain soaking the edge of his flannel, and she stepped closer to him to avoid a spreading puddle at her feet, her shoulder pressing into his chest. He could feel the heat of her body through her damp polo, her hair sticking to the side of her neck where the rain had hit it. He didn’t move away. Neither did she.
The rain let up after ten minutes, the sun breaking through the clouds again, leaving the air smelling like wet grass and charcoal. She had to go, she said, the taco truck wasn’t going to audit itself. Before she left, she grabbed a napkin from the stack next to the tap, scribbled her personal cell phone number on it in blue ink, and slid it across the bar to him. “If you want to talk more about the field upgrades sometime,” she said, pausing, “or just grab a beer that you don’t have to serve yourself, give me a call.”
He picked up the napkin, the paper still a little damp from the rain, and tucked it into the pocket of his scout notebook, the same one he kept radar gun readings and prospect notes in. He watched her walk away, her jeans damp at the cuffs, her boots squelching in the mud, and she glanced over her shoulder once, waving, before she turned the corner toward the food truck row.
He twisted off the cap of a cold seltzer for himself, leaned against the splintered bar, and nodded along when the banjo kicked into a cover of a Willie Nelson track he’d played on repeat on his first cross-country scouting trip.
