Manny Ruiz, 52, is a minor league baseball scout for the Kansas City Royals farm system, and he’s spent the last eight years treating every small town like a temporary blip on his route: no phone numbers exchanged, no dinner dates, no attachments. He’s convinced any personal connection will tank his ability to spot raw talent objectively, a flaw he’s never bothered to fix, not since his wife Lila died of ovarian cancer when they were 44. He quit his soul-sucking insurance sales job a month after the funeral to take the scouting gig he’d dreamed of since he was a kid playing sandlot ball in south Texas, figuring moving every few weeks would keep the grief from settling too heavy in his bones.
He’s standing in the fish fry line at the San Marcos VFW on a sticky June Saturday, humidity so thick it makes his cotton polo stick to his lower back, the air thick with the smell of fried catfish, cornmeal hushpuppies, and cheap domestic beer. He’s actively avoiding the local high school baseball coach, who’s been badgering him all week to bump his star lefty’s draft stock up half a point, so he’s lingering by the drink station, pretending to flip through his beat-up leather scouting notebook to make himself look busy.
He turns to grab a second handful of napkins, knocks hard into a woman holding a paper plate piled high with coleslaw, and his half-full sweet tea sloshes over the rim, splattering a pale yellow splotch across the front of her crisp white linen button-down. He stammers out an apology, grabs three more napkins, and leans in to dab at the stain before he thinks better of it, his calloused, pen-stained knuckles brushing the soft skin just above her collarbone. She doesn’t step back. She laughs, a low, warm, smoky sound, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum on her breath, notices the flecks of amber in her deep brown eyes, the thick streak of silver running through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid over her shoulder. She says her name is Maren, she runs the VFW kitchen, she’s seen him at every one of the high school’s home games this month, always sitting alone in the top row of the bleachers, scribbling so fast his pen moves faster than the pitchers’ 92-mile-an-hour fastballs.
Manny tenses up immediately, his first instinct to brush her off, say he’s just here for work, grab his catfish and bolt back to his motel. But she’s still standing close enough that her bare shoulder brushes his when a group of gray-haired veterans shuffles past to get to the beer cooler, and she doesn’t shift an inch away. He finds himself telling her he’s heading to Iowa in two weeks to scout a college summer league, he doesn’t make a habit of sticking around long enough to make friends. She smirks, taps the tea stain on her shirt, and says she doesn’t make a habit of letting men spill sweet tea on her favorite shirt and get away with just an apology, so he owes her a beer at minimum.
He finds himself telling her about Lila, about the 18 years they were married, about the insurance job he hated so much he’d sit in his car for 20 minutes every night before going inside just to avoid thinking about spreadsheets. He admits he thought scouting would fix the empty spot in his chest, but most nights he just eats microwave burritos alone in his motel room and rewatches 90s Royals games to fall asleep. She tells him her husband was an Army sergeant, died in a training accident four years prior, she’s been running the VFW kitchen ever since, too scared to sell the little house they bought together and move to the coast like they’d planned, too scared to do anything that feels like moving on, like she’s betraying his memory.
They hold eye contact for a long, quiet beat, no one looks away, and Manny can hear her breathing slow, his own heart picking up speed like he’s watching a 3-2 count with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of a playoff game. He lifts a hand, brushes a stray strand of hair that’s fallen loose from her braid off her face, his thumb brushing the soft curve of her cheek, and she tilts her head into his touch, her hand coming up to rest light on his wrist.
He asks her if she wants to come to the lefty’s final regular season game the next afternoon, says he’s got an extra folding chair in the back of his pickup, a cooler full of iced tea and lemonade, and he’ll even share the bag of peanut M&Ms he stashes in his notebook bag for innings that drag on too long. After the game, he says, he’s got a reservation at that little barbecue joint off the interstate, the one with the brisket that’s smoked for 14 hours and slathered in vinegar-based sauce, and if she’s open to it, he can push his Iowa departure back a whole week, no rush, no pressure, no plans beyond waking up each morning and seeing what the day brings.
She grins, laces her fingers through his, her palm soft and warm against his rough, pen-calloused hand, and says she’ll even bring her famous baked beans, the ones with bacon and brown sugar, to the game. A firefly lands on the back of her hand, glows bright gold for half a second before it flutters off into the dark.
