Manny Ruiz, 53, spent 28 years as a minor league equipment manager for the Akron RubberDucks before he retired after his wife’s sudden heart attack three years prior. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’d turned into a serial grump—snapping at teen skateboarders on the sidewalk, hanging up on telemarketers mid-sentence, walking out of town hall meetings before public comment even ended if he smelled what he called “bureaucratic nonsense.” He’d spent the last three weekends of every August at the local VFW post’s fish fry, partly for the crisp, beer-battered cod, partly because it was the only event he and his wife never missed in 26 years of marriage.
The August air hung thick enough to sip, heavy with the tang of fried grease, cut clover, and cheap draft beer that stuck to the pavement under the picnic tables. Manny was leaning against a splintered oak table, balancing a paper plate stacked with cod, creamy coleslaw, and three puffy hushpuppies in one hand, a cold root beer in the other, when he spotted her. He recognized her immediately: Lila, the 42-year-old new county library director who’d argued at last month’s town hall that the stack of 1970s baseball biographies he’d donated to the teen section after his wife died were “too unfiltered” for 13 and 14 year olds. He’d rolled his eyes and left the meeting before she could finish her sentence, already drafting a mental rant about overzealous librarians killing joy for kids who’d rather read about Mickey Mantle’s home runs than assigned YA novels.
He turned to head for the back cooler to grab a second root beer, and his forearm smacked straight into her bare shoulder. She was wearing a thin, pale yellow linen sundress, and he could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric before he jumped back, muttering an apology. She laughed, the sound light over the hum of the deep fryer and the old Alan Jackson track playing on the post’s beat-up speakers, and said she’d been looking for him. He tensed, ready to argue about the books, until she held up a hand and said she’d never wanted to ban them—she just wanted to move them to the adult sports section, where parents wouldn’t throw a fit if their kids stumbled on passages about Mantle’s drinking or Whitey Ford’s on-road antics. The teens could still check them out, she said, they just had to ask the front desk if they couldn’t find them.
They ended up sitting at an empty picnic table at the edge of the lot, far enough from the crowd that they didn’t have to yell over the chatter. A group of kids ran past chasing a stray cat, and Manny shifted his legs to let them pass, his jeans brushing her bare calf under the table. He didn’t move his leg away. She told him she’d been a fan of the RubberDucks as a kid, had gone to every home game with her dad until he passed when she was 16, and that she’d loved flipping through the biographies he’d donated before the parent complaints rolled in. He told her about the time a rookie catcher glued his batting glove to his left hand as a prank before a double header, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, swatting his arm playfully. He smelled coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm on her when she leaned in to hear him over a group of veterans cheering a football play on the TV by the bar.
His chest felt tight for a second, guilt bubbling up—he hadn’t flirted with anyone since his wife died, hadn’t even wanted to, and here he was leaning in closer to a woman he’d sworn he hated a month prior, noticing the flecks of gold in her green eyes, the way she tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear when she was listening, the faint smudge of blue ink on her left wrist from stamping library books that morning. He almost made an excuse to leave, until she reached across the table to grab one of his hushpuppies, her fingers brushing his knuckles when she did. He didn’t flinch.
The sun dipped below the tree line as they talked, the string lights strung between the post’s awning and the oak trees flickering on, painting golden dots over her dress. She asked if he’d be willing to come to the library next Wednesday to do a 20 minute talk for the teen sports club about his time with the RubberDucks, bring some of the old game-worn jerseys he kept in his garage, answer questions about what life in the minor leagues was really like. He said yes before he even thought about it. She pulled a crumpled napkin out of her purse, scribbled her cell number on it in the same blue ink that marked her wrist, and tucked it into the front pocket of his faded, frayed Cleveland Indians jersey.
She hugged him quick before she left, her shoulder pressing into his chest, and he could feel her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her dress. He sat at the table for 10 minutes after she drove away, picking at the last of his coleslaw, watching fireflies blink over the overgrown field behind the post. He didn’t feel guilty anymore, didn’t feel like he was betraying his wife—he knew she would have teased him for three straight days for writing off a pretty woman just because he disagreed with her at a town meeting. He pulled his beat-up old flip phone out of his jeans pocket, typed her number in, and hit save before the grease from the last hushpuppy smudged the ink off the napkin.
