Moe Pritchard is 59, a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 180,000 miles on his 2017 F-150 crisscrossing the Southeast hunting left-handed pitchers who can hit 94 mph without blowing out their elbow before they turn 22. His biggest flaw? He’s held a hard line for 8 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a high school football coach, that he won’t so much as grab a coffee with anyone who’s ever been within a 10-foot radius of her side of the family. Drama, he calls it. Not worth the headache.
It’s mid-July, 82 degrees at 8 p.m., humidity thick enough to coat the back of your throat when you breathe in, and he’s parked at his usual spot at the bar of The Rusty Bat, the dive off I-65 he stops at every time he’s heading back to his cottage outside Montgomery after a scouting trip. The jukebox is spitting out old Hank Williams Sr., the bar top is sticky under his forearms, and he’s halfway through his second bourbon on the rocks when a plastic bucket of salted peanuts clatters right next to his scuffed work boot.
The woman bending to pick it up is in a faded yellow sundress, barefoot, a smudge of barbecue sauce on her left cheek. Her hand brushes the denim of his jeans when she grabs the last stray peanut off the floor, and when she looks up, he freezes. He’d know that gap between her front teeth anywhere. Lena. His ex-wife’s younger cousin. He hasn’t seen her since his wedding 22 years ago, when she was 29 and snuck him a beer before the ceremony because his hands were shaking too bad to hold his tie straight.
First thought? Run. Pay the tab, hightail it to the truck, pretend he never saw her. She’s off limits. Taboo, even. The last time he heard anyone mention her, she was living in Florida, married to a commercial fisherman. But then she smirks, leans her hip against the bar, and says, “Well I’ll be damned. Moe Pritchard. You still leave your baseball cleats lying in the middle of the kitchen floor to piss off people who don’t deserve you?”
He snorts before he can stop himself. The knot in his shoulders loosens half an inch. She’s working the bar this summer, she explains, moved back to Alabama six months prior after her husband died in a boat accident, working part time to pay for vet tech classes so she can work at the large animal clinic out near his cottage. She slides him a third bourbon without him asking, her knuckle grazing his when she sets the glass down, and he notices the sundress strap has slipped down her left shoulder, revealing a smattering of freckles he doesn’t remember being there 22 years ago.
He fights the urge to reach over and tuck the strap back in. That’s a line he shouldn’t cross. He’s got that rule, for Christ’s sake. But she doesn’t move to fix it, either. She holds his gaze two beats longer than she would a random customer, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and fried pickles wafting off her, mixing with the bourbon fumes in his nose.
They talk through the rush, her darting off to grab beers for a table of construction workers, sliding him a free plate of fried okra between orders, sitting down next to him on the empty bar stool when the last customer leaves at 11. Their knees brush under the bar, the rough fabric of her dress catching on his jeans, and she holds out her left wrist to show him the thin, silvery scar running across it from a horse riding accident when she was 16. He runs his thumb over it before he can think better of it, and she doesn’t pull away.
Her laugh is warm, loud enough to cut through the crickets chirping outside the open bar door. She teases him about the old stories she heard from his ex, how he once drove three hours out of his way to rescue a stray dog he found on the side of the road during a scouting trip, how he used to sing off-key to old country songs in the shower. For the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to defend himself, or make an excuse to leave. The rule feels stupid, suddenly. All that self-imposed distance, just to avoid a little drama that might not even happen.
She leans in closer, so her shoulder is pressed to his, and asks if he wants to go sit in his truck to watch the fireflies blinking in the field across the parking lot. He hesitates for half a second, the voice in his head screaming about ex-wives and family drama and rules he made for a reason, then nods. He pays the tab, follows her out to the truck, the asphalt still warm through the soles of his boots.
The AC in the F-150 is broken, so they roll the windows all the way down, crickets and the distant hum of a semi on the highway drifting into the cab. She leans over and kisses him first, tastes like peach seltzer and mint gum, her hand curling into the hair at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t overthink it. Doesn’t worry about what his ex would say, or what people in town might whisper if they see them together.
When they pull apart, she grabs a tupperware of peach cobbler she had stashed behind the bar earlier, shoves it into his lap, and says she’s always wanted to see the collection of vintage baseball cards he keeps in the guest room of his cottage. He asks her if she likes scrambled eggs with hot sauce for breakfast, and she nods, grinning so wide the gap between her teeth shows.
He rests his hand on her knee the whole drive back, the crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the radio static.
