Elio Rios, 52, part-time minor league baseball scout for the Detroit Tigers single-A affiliate, spends most of his spring driving pothole-ridden backroads through Ohio and Indiana, stopping at high school diamonds and dive bars to ask locals about the left-handed pitcher with the 92-mile fastball or the shortstop who can throw out a runner from his knees in the outfield grass. He’s got a scar slashing across his right eyebrow from a line drive that got past his glove in college, a habit of chewing peppermint gum so hard his jaw aches by the end of the day, and a long-standing rule against dating anyone who lives within 20 miles of the small western Ohio town he calls home. The rule comes from a 30-year-old grudge he’s carried against his high school sweetheart, who he swore left town without a word the summer after they graduated, ditching their plan to move to Tampa so he could try out for a minor league roster. He’s turned down three dozen first dates over the years because of that grudge, convinced anyone he cares about will vanish before he can blink.
He’s at the annual volunteer fire department potluck BBQ on a humid Saturday in late May, half-scouting a 17-year-old lefty from the local high school who’s flipping burgers on the grill, half-picking at a plate of potato salad when she walks up. Marisol Cruz. He hasn’t seen her in person since the day she left town, and his throat goes tight when he spots her. She’s got the same thick, wavy brown hair streaked with silver at the temples, the same tiny scar on her left wrist from the time they crashed his beat-up 1989 Ford F-150 into a ditch on prom night, the same laugh that cuts through the noise of the crowd and the crackle of the grill like a bell. She’s the town’s new large-animal vet, he remembers hearing through the grapevine, took over the old clinic after her dad retired last fall.
She stops at the potluck table two feet away from him, reaches for the same jar of pickled okra he’s reaching for, and their fingers brush. The contact is electric, sharp enough that he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove, and she huffs a soft laugh, tilting her head to look up at him. She’s standing so close he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the faint, sweet scent of horse shampoo on her flannel shirt, hear the jingle of the dog tags on her keychain hanging out of her jeans pocket, see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes that he’d spent hundreds of hours staring at when they were teens.
He’s torn between turning and walking away, like he’s planned to do if he ever ran into her, and leaning in to hear what she has to say. He’s spent three decades talking trash about her to anyone who asked, calling her selfish, calling her a coward, and now he’s embarrassed at how fast his heart is beating, how he can’t stop staring at the way her jeans fit her hips, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s thinking, just like she used to.
“Thought you’d avoid me forever,” she says, picking up the jar of okra and twisting the lid open, her knuckles white from the effort. He reaches out without thinking, takes the jar from her, twists the lid open in one quick motion, and hands it back. Their fingers brush again, and this time he doesn’t pull away.
They lean against the splintered wooden picnic table while they talk, their shoulders brushing every time someone walks past them, their knees knocking when they shift their weight. She tells him she tried to call him a dozen times over the years, sent letters, even messaged him on Facebook twice, but he never responded. He tells her he never got any of it, that his mom told him she’d left town without leaving a note, that she’d never cared about him or their plan to go to Florida.
Her face softens when he says that, and she pulls a crumpled, faded piece of notebook paper out of her wallet, the edges frayed from 30 years of being folded and unfolded, and hands it to him. He recognizes her loopy handwriting immediately, the same handwriting that used to scrawl notes on his locker between classes, the same handwriting that wrote “I love you” on the cast he wore when he broke his arm junior year. The note says she had to stay to take care of her dad, who’d just been diagnosed with diabetes, that she’d wait for him to come back, that she loved him more than baseball, more than anything. His mom never gave it to him, he realizes, because she thought Marisol would hold him back from his baseball career.
The sirens from the fire station go off then, blaring loud enough that he can barely hear himself think, and the volunteer firefighters scattered through the crowd take off running for the trucks. The noise fades after a minute, and he looks up from the note to find her watching him, her thumb brushing the back of his hand where he’s still holding the crumpled paper.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He just squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, her palm warm and calloused from handling horses and dogs all day, the same way it used to be when they’d hold hands walking down the high school hallway. They agree to meet for breakfast at the diner on Main Street the next morning, at 7 a.m., the same time they used to meet before school to share an order of blueberry pancakes.
He walks her to her beat-up pickup truck parked at the edge of the field, and she leans in to hug him before she climbs in, her chest pressed against his, her hair falling in his face. He wraps his arms around her, and for the first time in 30 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run, doesn’t feel the cold weight of that old grudge sitting in his chest. She pulls away, squeezes his hand one last time, and climbs into the driver’s seat, rolling the window down to wave as she pulls out of the parking lot.
He stands there for five minutes after her taillights fade around the corner, holding the crumpled note in one hand and the half-eaten jar of pickled okra in the other, and smiles.
