Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last nine years driving 40,000 miles a year up and down the Gulf Coast as a minor league baseball scout, chasing left-handed pitchers with 95-mile fastballs and shortstops who can turn a double play in their sleep. His only consistent companion is a tattered leather notebook full of smudged scouting notes, and his biggest flaw is that he’s spent his whole life prioritizing other people’s comfort over his own—a habit that ended his 12-year marriage when he put off telling his wife he hated the suburban McMansion she’d insisted they buy until she’d already furnished every room.
He’s hunched over that notebook at a dive bar off the side of US 19 in Port Charlotte when she sits down next to him, the shoulder of her black leather jacket brushing his worn flannel hard enough that he jolts, pen skittering across the page. The bar smells like fried dill pickles and stale draft beer, the jukebox spitting out Tom Petty deep cuts loud enough to rattle the neon beer sign above the bar, rain lashing the tin awning so hard it drowns out the chatter of the fishing crew in the back booth.
He recognizes her before he even fully looks up: Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d snuck him a beer at his own wedding reception when his ex had banned alcohol for the first two hours, who’d called him out for letting his ex walk all over him at a family cookout back in 2017, the last time he’d seen her. She’s 47 now, a few silver strands woven through the dark curly hair she’d pulled back in a loose bun, a smudge of motorcycle grease on the side of her wrist, her whiskey on the rocks clinking when she sets it down on the bar top between them.
He tenses up first, half ready to grab his notebook and bolt. His ex still talks about him like he’s a deadbeat who left her for a younger woman, even though he left because he couldn’t take another year of pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and if she found out he was even talking to Lila she’d blow up the entire family group chat before the sun came up. But Lila just grins, the same lopsided grin she had when they were younger, and nods at the notebook in front of him. “Still writing down every kid’s batting average like it’s top secret government intel? I thought you’d have switched to an iPad by now.”
He laughs, the tension leaking out of his shoulders slow. He leans in a little when she talks, the rain getting louder, close enough that he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the faint cigarette smoke on her jacket, close enough that he can see the tiny freckle across the bridge of her nose he’d forgotten was there. When she reaches for the napkin dispenser at the same time he does, their fingers brush, and he feels a jolt up his arm like he touched a live wire, his face heating up like a kid at his first middle school dance. Their knees knock under the bar a minute later, and neither of them moves away.
They chat for an hour, about the high school travel team she coaches up in Tampa, about the 19-year-old shortstop Manny had watched strike out three times that afternoon, about how her sister—Manny’s ex—had spent the last three days complaining about her new husband’s obsession with vintage pickup trucks. Lila teases him about the fact that he still orders the same beer he drank in his 20s, still chews peppermint gum so hard his jaw works all the time, still avoids conflict so bad he’d rather sit through a three hour family dinner he hates than tell someone he’d rather leave.
When she says she’s had a crush on him since she was 22, since she’d watched him fix her flat tire on the side of the highway in the rain without even asking for a thank you, he freezes. The conflict hits him sharp: disgust at the idea of messing with his ex’s family, fear of the drama that will follow if anyone finds out, warring with a desire he hasn’t felt in years, the kind of desire that makes him forget every stupid rule he’s ever made for himself to keep other people happy. He stares at her for a long minute, at the flush on her cheeks from the whiskey, at her hand resting an inch from his on the bar top, and he realizes he doesn’t care what anyone thinks anymore.
He slides his hand over hers, his calloused scout’s fingers wrapping around hers, and she laces their fingers together, her palm warm against his. They leave the bar ten minutes later, Manny tucking his notebook under his arm, holding the door open so Lila can step out into the rain. She loops her arm through his, pressing close to his side to stay out of the downpour, and they walk down the block to his beat-up Ford F150, the cold rain soaking through his flannel but he doesn’t even feel it. He unlocks the passenger door for her, she leans in before she climbs in, her lips brushing his soft and quick, the taste of her whiskey lip gloss lingering on his skin as she slides into the seat. He climbs into the driver’s seat a second later, turns the key in the ignition, and doesn’t even glance in the rearview mirror as he pulls out onto the rain-slicked road.
