Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent the last three years treating his off-season in northern Ohio like a temporary layover, not a life. A minor league baseball scout who logs 40,000 miles a year chasing raw-armed high school pitchers who throw 95 mph but can’t hold a conversation, he’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide: he won’t ask for help with anything, not even when his gutter fell off last spring, not when he forgot to renew his fishing license and got a ticket, not when his old buddy Ray begged him for six months to come to the town’s annual fall chili cookoff. He finally caved last Saturday only because Ray promised to slip him a case of the craft IPA he brews in his garage, no strings attached.
The tent strung up between the town square’s oak trees was so crowded Manny almost turned right back around to his empty lake house. He’d made it three steps inside when a woman reaching for the last cornbread muffin on the platter brushed her knuckles against his. Her skin was warm, calloused at the index finger, and she pulled back fast, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, and Manny got a whiff of her perfume, something woody, like pine and old paper. “Been craving cornbread all week. You can have it if you want it.”
He shook his head, pushed the muffin toward her. He didn’t even like cornbread. He learned later her name was Clara, she’d moved into the blue bungalow two doors down from his place six months prior, ran the vintage bookstore on Main Street. The line for chili samples inched forward so slow their shoulders stayed pressed together for 12 full minutes, Manny’s flannel thin enough that he could feel the heat of her arm through the fabric, even through her thin knit sweater. She asked what he did for work, and when he said he scouted minor league pitchers, she didn’t give him the usual blank stare most people do. She asked if he’d ever seen a left-handed knuckleballer make it to the show, and Manny talked for 10 minutes straight without stopping, something he hadn’t done with anyone who wasn’t a fellow scout since his wife died. When they finally got to the front of the line, he grabbed a sample of the chili marked “extra spicy” on a dare from Ray, took a bite, and immediately started coughing, his eyes burning so bad he could barely see. She handed him a crumpled napkin, laughing so hard her shoulders shook, the sound light, like the wind chimes his wife used to hang on their back porch before she got sick.
He fought the pull of it the whole time. Told himself he was being stupid, that getting involved with someone at his age was just asking for more heartache, that he was better off going home to his frozen pizza and his senior hound and his stack of scouting reports, no one to answer to, no one to disappoint. He’d already opened his mouth to make an excuse about having to get back to let his dog out when she mentioned she’d picked up a first printing of the 1972 MLB Scouting Manual at an estate sale last month, had no use for it, didn’t know anyone who would want it.
The drizzle started right as they left the cookoff, cold and fine, sticking to Manny’s salt-and-pepper hair as they walked the three blocks back to their neighborhood. He offered her a hot toddy when they hit his porch, half-expecting her to say no, half-hoping she would. She said yes. His house smelled like cedar and the cold brew coffee he’d brewed that morning, and when he reached up to grab mugs from the cabinet above the stove, her hand brushed the small of his back, light as a sparrow’s wing, for half a second. He froze. He’d forgotten what it felt like, to have someone touch him like that, soft, no agenda, just because they were close.
