Earl Hackett, 53, minor league baseball scout for the Cincinnati Reds farm system, hunches over a chipped bourbon glass at a dive bar off I-4 outside Lakeland, rain streaking the smudged plexiglass windows so hard the neon ‘OPEN’ sign bleeds pink across the parking lot. He’s got a crumpled scouting notebook open to the page marked for Javi Rios, the 17-year-old lefty he’d watched throw 92 mile-per-hour fastballs for three straight innings earlier that night, sunflower seed shells scattered across the linoleum counter at his feet. He hasn’t dated anyone since his wife left him for a real estate agent seven years prior, stubbornly convinced any casual connection is a waste of time he could spend on the road, chasing the next kid who might make the big leagues. That’s his flaw, he’ll admit it if pressed: he picks predictability over anything that might rattle his routine, even when the routine feels like it’s wearing a rut into his bones.
The bell above the door jingles, and a woman shakes rain off her windbreaker as she steps inside, sopping wet, the cuff of her jeans dark up to the calf. He recognizes her immediately from the local news segments he’d flipped past on the drive over: Mara Torres, the third grade teacher leading the county’s public school strike, the one talk radio hosts had been calling an entitled troublemaker all week. She sits two stools down, orders a dark lager, and rests her elbows on the counter, marker stains smudged along her wrist from making picket signs that morning, calluses along her knuckles from hauling boxes of donated school supplies to her classroom for the last decade. When she reaches for the stack of paper napkins between them at the same time he does, their knuckles brush, and she huffs a quiet laugh, pulling her hand back like she’s touched something warm. “Sorry,” she says, and her voice is rougher than he expects, like she’s been yelling over crowds all day.
He nods, gestures for her to take the napkins first, and she leans in a little when she catches sight of the baseball stats scribbled in his notebook. “You coach?” she asks, nodding at the page marked with Javi’s name. He explains he’s a scout, and she tells him her 10-year-old son is a catcher in the local Little League, complains he spends half his practice messing around in the dirt instead of paying attention to the pitcher. The conversation drifts easy, the way conversations do when it’s pouring rain outside and no one’s in a rush to leave, and he finds himself leaning in too, their shoulders only a few inches apart, the scent of cedar and citrus from her shampoo mixing with the bourbon fumes and the salty smell of peanuts behind the bar. She holds eye contact longer than most people do, doesn’t look away when he catches her staring at the thin scar snaking up his left forearm from a college baseball collision he’d had when he was 20. When she shifts in her seat to grab her beer off the counter, her knee brushes his under the bar, warm through the thin denim of their jeans, and neither of them moves away.
His internal alarm bell goes off halfway through the story he’s telling about a prospect he’d scouted in Alabama who showed up to a game hungover and threw a no-hitter anyway. He knows better than to mess with someone who’s at the center of a local firestorm, knows the last thing he needs is to get wrapped up in drama that doesn’t have anything to do with baseball or his carefully mapped travel schedule. Half the people in the bar had been grumbling about the strike when he walked in, complaining about having to find childcare for their kids, and there’s a stupid, sharp thrill to talking to her anyway, like he’s breaking a rule he didn’t even know he’d agreed to follow. He’d bought into the radio noise earlier that week, too, thought the teachers were being greedy for asking for a raise, but when she tells him she spends almost $2,000 a year out of her own pocket on crayons and notebooks and snacks for kids who show up to school hungry, he feels a sharp twist of shame in his gut, conflict warring with the low hum of attraction he’s been trying to ignore since she sat down.
The bartender yells over the noise of the rain 20 minutes later, says the county just issued a flash flood warning for the road out front, no one’s leaving for at least two hours. She smirks, swirling the last of her beer in the glass, and nods at the empty vinyl booth in the back, away from the group of construction guys yelling at the football game on the TV. “Wanna sit over there? Quieter,” she says, and he hesitates for half a second, the voice in his head that always picks the safe option screaming that he should say no, that he should stick to his plan to drive back to Tampa at 6 a.m. the next day, that he doesn’t have time for this. He says yes anyway.
The booth is smaller than it looks, so their thighs press together from hip to knee when they slide in, warm even through their wet clothes. She tucks a strand of damp dark hair behind her ear, and her hand brushes his shoulder when she points out a guy playing darts by the door who’d been on the picket line with her that morning, holding a sign that read I TEACH 25 KIDS FOR LESS THAN YOUR CAR PAYMENT. She tells him her ex-husband moved to Georgia three years ago, only sees their son every other weekend, and he tells her about his ex-wife, about the empty house in Tampa he only spends two weeks a month in. When she leans in to tell him a story about the kid in her class who brought her a dandelion he’d picked from the school lawn the day before the strike started, her breath is warm on his cheek, and he can count the faint freckles across her nose.
She asks him if he’s got any plans tomorrow besides scouting, and he pauses, because he was supposed to drive back to Tampa first thing, meet with the regional scouting director for lunch, but he can reschedule that, can push it back a day, no one’s gonna yell at him for it. He tells her that, and she smiles, wide and bright, sliding her unlocked phone across the booth to him so he can put his number in. The rain slows down enough that he can hear the Johnny Cash song playing low on the jukebox now, the bar’s neon lights casting soft blue streaks across her face. He types his number in, adds a note next to it that says Earl, can teach your kid how to throw a curveball, and his thumb brushes hers when he hands the phone back.
