Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent the last eight years living out of a beat-up Ford F-150, crisscrossing the Southeast as a minor league baseball scout. His only consistent companion is a tattered binder full of pitcher stat sheets, and his biggest flaw is that he’d rather drive three hours through a thunderstorm to watch a 19-year-old throw 90 mph fastballs than have a 10-minute conversation about anything not related to spin rates or ERA. His divorce finalized the same week he got promoted to full-time scouting, and he’s treated personal connection like a bad slider ever since: unpredictable, likely to blow up in his face, not worth the risk. He only agreed to come to the VFW chili cookoff because his next-door neighbor, a retired Army sergeant, badgered him for three straight days about the $500 grand prize, and Manny’s brisket chili recipe had won three fraternity cookoffs back when he was at Auburn.
He’s leaning against a folding table next to his crockpot, sipping a watery Bud Light, half-scrolling through a scout report on a lefty out of south Georgia when he spots her. Lena Marlow, 48, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who always sat in the back at family barbecues, wearing band tees and ignoring the rest of the family’s gossip about who was cheating on who or who’d defaulted on their mortgage. She’s wearing high-waisted black jeans, a faded Rumours tee, work boots caked in what looks like metal shavings, silver hoops glinting under the fluorescent overhead lights. Her mom lives two blocks from the VFW, he remembers, she’s a welder out in Asheville, only comes down a couple times a year.
Their eyes lock across the room. She freezes for half a second, then smirks, picking up a paper plate and weaving through the crowd of retirees and local cops toward him. The air smells like cumin and charcoal and the menthol cigarettes the guys are smoking out on the back patio, the jukebox in the corner spitting out old George Strait deep cuts. She stops so close he can smell the vanilla lotion she’s wearing, over the faint tang of welding smoke still clinging to her hair. “I didn’t know you were still in Tampa,” she says, tilting her head, and he notices the tiny scar through her left eyebrow, the one she got crashing a dirt bike when she was 16, the story his ex used to roll her eyes at every time it came up.
“Just bought a bungalow a mile from here,” he says, shifting his weight, suddenly hyper-aware of the ketchup stain on the sleeve of his Mississippi Braves hoodie. “Off-season, for once.” He reaches for a plastic spoon to scoop her a sample of chili at the same time she does, and their hands brush. He feels the rough callus on her knuckle, the warmth of her skin against his, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove. For a second he’s frozen, equal parts horrified and hungry—horrified because this is his ex-wife’s cousin, half the people in this room know who they are, hungry because no one’s made his chest feel tight like that in close to a decade.
He expects her to pull back, make a joke, walk away. Instead she laughs, a low, rough sound, and grabs the spoon, scooping a heaping bite of chili. “Still too spicy,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “Sarah always bitched about that, right? Said you were trying to burn her taste buds off.” Sarah is his ex. He laughs, surprised, and leans against the table a little closer to her, their shoulders almost touching now. No one’s paying attention to them, everyone’s too busy arguing about which chili is better, yelling at the college football game playing on the TV above the bar.
They talk for 40 minutes straight, no lulls, no awkward small talk. She tells him about the custom motorcycle frames she’s been building, he tells her about the 17-year-old kid he scouted last fall who throws 97 mph but cries every time he gives up a hit. She leans in when he talks, her arm brushing his every time she gestures with her beer cup, her eyes never leaving his, and he forgets to check his phone for stat updates, forgets that half the people in this room would have a field day if they saw how close they’re standing.
When the announcer calls the third place chili winner, she nods her head toward the back patio, and he follows her without thinking. It’s cool out, the sky turning soft pink and orange at the edges, no one else out there, the noise from inside muted through the brick walls. She leans against the cinder block wall, crossing her arms, and he steps closer, so close he can see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. “I always thought you were too good for her,” she says, quiet, like she’s admitting something she’s been holding onto for years. “You never got to be the guy who makes stupid jokes and loves dumb baseball and makes chili so spicy it makes people sweat. She wanted a boring real estate guy who went to PTA meetings.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just leans in and kisses her, and she kisses him back, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, her thumb brushing the scar he has there from a college baseball injury. He can taste the cherry Sour Patch she’d been eating earlier, the faint hint of bourbon she’d mixed in with her beer, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run, doesn’t feel like this is going to blow up in his face.
When they pull apart, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and grins. “Your place tomorrow? I bring beer, you bring leftover chili. No one has to know.” He nods, and she squeezes his wrist before pushing off the wall and walking back inside, the hem of her jeans brushing the gravel under her feet. He stands there for another minute, watching the sun dip below the oak trees at the edge of the parking lot, and he shoves his scouting binder in the back of his truck, not even tempted to open it for the rest of the night.
