Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent 22 years driving 30,000 miles a year as a minor league baseball scout, sleeping in motel beds with sheets that smell like generic detergent and regret, and dodging any question that starts with “when are you gonna settle down.” His biggest flaw, the one his older sister rags on him about every Thanksgiving, is that he bails the second a conversation starts to sound like it could lead to a Sunday brunch invite or a key left on his counter. He blames it on growing up on the road with his dad, who also scouted, who taught him the only thing you can count on is a lefty’s sharp curve ball and a warm beer at the end of a long day.
He’s nursing that warm beer at the Auglaize County Fair beer tent on a sticky late August night, dust from the bleachers crusted on his boot soles, sunburn stinging the back of his neck, when he reaches for a napkin and his knuckles bump someone else’s. He looks up, and it’s Lara Hale, wife of the local high school athletic director, the woman he’s nodded at from the stands at 40-some games over the past three years, the one he’s always told himself is off limits for a dozen obvious reasons.
She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the twang of the country cover band cranking out a John Prine cover, and wipes a drop of cherry seltzer off her wrist. “Sorry, I was grabbing for the same thing. This tent has fewer napkins than the visiting team dugout last week when we had that rain delay.”
Manny nods, half frozen, because he’d had a beer with her husband Greg just two weeks prior, had listened to Greg complain about the school board slashing the baseball budget. He should say hi, make small talk, move to another table. But the tent is packed, every other seat is taken, and when she slides onto the bench across from him, her knee brushes his under the table, and she doesn’t pull away.
She’s wearing a faded yellow floral sundress, white canvas sneakers caked with mud from the infield, and she smells like coconut tanning oil and the cherry Lifesavers she keeps in her purse. She leans in when she talks, because the band is so loud the plastic cups on the table rattle, and her hair falls over her shoulder, brushing his forearm when she gestures at the group of teens dancing by the stage.
They talk for an hour, first about the left-handed pitcher Manny was scouting that afternoon, then about her son, the shortstop who hit a two-run homer in the seventh inning, then about how small towns make you feel like you’re performing a role for everyone else even when you’re miserable. She says she and Greg separated three months ago, haven’t told anyone, because they don’t want the whole town gossiping before their son graduates next spring.
Manny’s chest feels tight, half guilt, half something sharper, hotter, the kind of feeling he’s spent 20 years running from. He knows he should leave, knows if anyone sees them sitting this close, talking this quiet, the gossip will spread faster than a wildfire in the dry cornfields surrounding the fairgrounds. But when she looks up at him, her eyes dark under the string lights strung across the tent, and holds his gaze for three full seconds longer than she should, he can’t make himself stand up.
When the band wraps up their set, she says she parked by the 4-H barn, on the far side of the lot, and he offers to walk her, says the path is dark and there’s a group of drunk teens tearing around on golf carts. She nods, and when they step out of the tent, the cool night air hits his sunburned neck, and she shivers a little, so he hands her his ratty navy scout’s jacket, the one with the frayed Cleveland Guardians patch on the sleeve.
The fair noise fades as they cut across the empty edge of the parking lot, fireflies flickering in the cornfield next to them, the distant shriek of the tilt-a-whirl barely audible over the rustle of corn stalks in the wind. She stops by her beat-up minivan, turns to him, and reaches up to touch the sunburn on the back of his neck, her fingers soft, warmer than he expected. “I’ve seen you at every game for three years,” she says, her voice quiet. “You always smile at the kids when they mess up, not yell. I always thought that was nice.”
He doesn’t overthink it, for the first time in as long as he can remember. He leans down and kisses her, and she tastes like cherry seltzer and mint gum, her hand curling around the back of his neck, holding him there, no hesitation. When they pull apart, she tugs the jacket tighter around her shoulders, and says she knows the small cabin he rents six miles out of town, that she’s driven past it a hundred times.
He doesn’t ask how she knows it’s his. He just nods, says he’ll follow her, and walks back to his pickup, his hands still shaking a little, the taste of cherry on his lips. He pulls into the cabin driveway two minutes after her, unlocks the front door, and holds it open for her. She steps inside, pauses for half a second, then kicks off her muddy white sneakers, setting them next to the stack of scouting reports he left by the welcome mat that morning.
