Moe Sorrentino, 61, minor league baseball scout based out of southern Illinois, has spent the last 8 years structuring his days around highway drives, scouting reports, and frozen dinners eaten alone at his lake cabin. His worst flaw is that he’s spent so long avoiding any kind of casual connection that he’s forgotten how to hold a conversation that doesn’t revolve around pitch velocity or batting averages. He’s at the small town annual summer beer and wine festival only because his boss forced him to take a weekend off, no scouting allowed, so he’s wandering the rows of booths with his hands in the pockets of his faded work jeans, sun warm on the back of his neck under his frayed 2011 World Series cap.
He stops at the last booth on the row, the one selling small-batch mead, because the sign has a cartoon bee holding a baseball bat, and before he can read the fine print the woman behind the counter laughs, loud and bright, and says his name like she’s been waiting to see him for years. It’s Lila Marlow, Ellen’s younger cousin, the one who moved to Oregon to keep bees right after Ellen and Moe got married, who he hasn’t seen in person since Ellen’s funeral. She’s 56 now, hair cut short in curly honey-blonde waves, sunspots across her nose, a faded flannel tied around her waist over a white tank top, and when she leans across the counter to pass him a sample cup, their fingers brush. He feels the rough callus on her thumb from handling hive frames, sees faint yellow pollen dust under the edges of her clear nail polish, and for a second he forgets how to breathe.
The hum of the festival fades into background noise for a minute—kids screaming on the inflatable bounce house, the crackle of the taco truck’s fryer, a bluegrass band playing off to the side. She holds his gaze three full beats too long, no polite look away, teases him that he still wears that dumb cap Ellen got him for their 25th anniversary, that she’d bet he still leaves socks on the couch floor just like he did when they’d all visit the lake cottage back in the 90s. He flushes, runs a hand over his stubbled jaw, admits she’s right on both counts. He’s torn half between panic and a warm flutter in his chest he hasn’t felt since he was 22 asking Ellen out for the first time; Lila’s family, always has been, and 8 years of telling himself any interest in anyone but Ellen is a betrayal, a failure of his vows.
She doesn’t push, just chats about the mead, how she moved back last year post-divorce, bought 10 acres of clover fields on the county edge, has 40 hives now, hopes to expand next year. Every time she leans forward to grab a bottle for another customer, her arm brushes his where he leans on the counter, and he can smell wild clover and orange seltzer on her, no heavy perfume, just warm and real. When the line dies down, she tucks cash into her apron pocket and asks if he wants to ditch the crowd, walk the river trail, she’s got a cooler of reserve blackberry mead in her pickup she saved for a good occasion. He hesitates half a second, the voice in his head yelling this is wrong, he’s dishonoring Ellen, but then he looks at the crinkles around her smiling eyes and nods before he can overthink it.
The gravel path crunches under their scuffed work boots as they walk, she bumps her shoulder against his every few steps, points out great blue herons nesting in the willows over the river, mentions she used to sneak down here to smoke as a teen visiting Ellen. They find a fallen oak log half shaded by maple, she sits close enough their thighs press through jeans, and when she reaches across him to grab the cooler, her curls brush his jaw, soft and smelling like her shampoo. He doesn’t move away.
She admits she’s stopped by his usual Tuesday diner for months, ordered coffee and sat across from him, too nervous to say hi, scared he’d think her disrespectful, that family would talk if they saw them together. He laughs quiet, says he noticed her a month ago, thought he was imagining it, was too much of a coward to speak first. He tells her he’s spent 8 years hiding out at the cabin, turning down every friend invite, every sister-led fix-up, convinced moving on meant forgetting Ellen. Lila nods, sips her mead, says Ellen used to tell her if anything ever happened to her, she’d kick Moe’s ass if he spent the rest of his life alone. He blinks back unexpected tightness in his throat, and for the first time in 8 years, being with someone doesn’t feel like loss, it feels like a gift.
The sun dips low over the river, painting the water pink and orange, and when Lila leans in a little closer, her shoulder warm against his, he rests his calloused palm lightly on her knee, the fabric of her cutoff shorts soft under his fingers.
