Manny Rios, 59, independent minor league baseball scout, had only showed up to the town’s annual fire department rib cookoff because his boss threatened to reassign the southeastern Ohio territory to a 22-year-old kid who thought a 90 mph fastball made a prospect a first-round lock. He’d spent the last 40 minutes tucked against the side of a fire truck, beer sweating through the paper coaster in his hand, avoiding eye contact with anyone who looked like they wanted to ask how he liked the town, or if he was single, or what the patch on his worn scout jacket meant. Eight years after his ex-wife left him for her high school sweetheart cross-country coach, he’d perfected the art of the unapproachable scowl, and it had served him fine until he turned to leave and walked straight into someone carrying a heaping plate of ribs.
Barbecue sauce splattered across the left breast of his jacket, dark and sticky. Before he could grumble out an apology, a hand brushed his wrist, light enough that he almost thought he imagined it first. He looked down, met warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners, close enough that he could smell lavender soap cut with smoked paprika and the faint sweetness of peach iced tea on her breath. She was the neighbor he’d only seen waving from her pottery studio porch across the street, the one the cashier at the grocery store had muttered about three days prior, saying she was “bad news” for the married guys in town.
“Whoa, sorry about that,” she said, dabbing at the sauce spot with a crumpled napkin before he could jerk away. Her fingers were rough, calloused at the tips from throwing clay, and the fabric of his jacket pulled a little when she rubbed at the stain. She held his gaze for three full seconds longer than polite, a half-smirk playing on her mouth like she knew exactly what he’d heard about her, and didn’t care. “Figured you’d be hiding over here. Saw you sitting on your porch last night yelling at your laptop when that Dayton pitcher walked three guys in a row.”
Manny blinked. He’d thought he was invisible out there, the porch light off, only the glow of his game stream lighting up his face. He opened his mouth to say something snappish, tell her to mind her own business, but she held out a spare rib from her plate, still glistening with sauce, and he found himself taking it instead. The meat fell off the bone, smoky and sweet, and he grunted in approval without meaning to. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the blare of the country cover band playing by the beer tent, and leaned in a little closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep.
She told him her name was Lila, she ran the pottery studio three blocks from the cookoff, she’d moved to town two years prior after her own divorce, and she’d been waiting for him to stop looking like he wanted to bite anyone who talked to him to say hello. Manny’s chest felt tight, the familiar pull between irritation at being observed and the quiet, thrumming thrill of being seen, of someone paying enough attention to know he yelled at bad pitching, that he hated small talk, that he only drank dark beer even when it was 85 degrees out. He’d spent so long convincing himself he wanted to be alone that the pull of wanting to stay close to her felt like a betrayal of the routine he’d built, the safe, quiet life where no one could disappoint him.
When the fire chief wandered over to say hello, Manny did the bare minimum of schmoozing, asked about his 17-year-old son’s fastball, committed to coming to his next start the following Friday, all while he could feel Lila standing next to him, her arm brushing his every time someone walked past and jostled the crowd. When the chief walked away, she tilted her head toward the edge of the park. “Wanna get out of here? I made something you might like, back at the studio.”
The walk was short, the summer air thick with the smell of cut grass and charcoal, and when she unlocked the studio door, the cool, earthy smell of clay hit him first, soft and quiet, a world away from the noise of the cookoff. She walked over to a shelf by the window, grabbed a mug, and handed it to him. It was glazed navy blue, raised stitching wrapping around the side exactly like a baseball. “Saw your jacket the first day you moved in,” she said, her hand brushing his when he took the mug. “Figured you’d need something to drink that terrible coffee you make every morning out of.”
Manny stared at the mug, the weight of it solid in his hand, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel the urge to run, to make an excuse, to tell himself he didn’t deserve something that felt this easy. He leaned in, kissed her slow, the leftover taste of rib sauce and peach iced tea on her lips, and she laughed against his mouth, her hands tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t worry about what the grocery store cashier would say, didn’t wonder if it would end badly, just let her pull him closer, the cool clay of the mug still pressed between their palms.
They ended up on the back porch of the studio an hour later, him drinking a cold beer out of the baseball mug, her leaning against his shoulder, watching the sunset bleed orange over the cornfields at the edge of town. He hadn’t thought about his ex once all night, hadn’t checked his work email, hadn’t made a single mental list of all the reasons this was a bad idea. A firework from the cookoff’s afterparty bursts pink over the treeline, and he rests his hand lightly on her knee, no plan, no overthinking, just the warm press of her skin under his palm.
