Rafe Mendez, 52, has scouted collegiate summer league prospects for the Houston Astros for 18 years, and he’s got the sun spots across his nose and a dented 2012 F-150 tailgate to prove it. He still refuses to use a team-issued tablet for notes, scribbles every hit velocity and fielding misstep in a tattered leather notebook bound with rubber bands, and hasn’t let anyone sit in his truck’s passenger seat for longer than a 10-minute ride to a game in just over a decade. His ex-wife left him 12 years prior, when he missed their 10th anniversary to tend to a top pitching prospect who’d blown out his elbow in rural Oklahoma, and he’d decided right then that letting anyone get close was a fool’s game, one that would only distract him from the work he’d spent his whole life building.
The July air in New Braunfels sticks to his skin when he pushes through the screen door of the bar off the main drag, 94 degrees even at 10 p.m., the smell of fried pickles and cold Shiner Bock wrapping around him before he even reaches the counter. He claims his usual stool at the far end, nods at the bartender who already has his beer poured, and flips open his notebook to scribble a last note about the 19-year-old shortstop who’d hit a grand slam in the eighth inning, the kind of kid who could make the bigs in three years if he stopped swinging at low curveballs.
He’s halfway through his second beer when she slides onto the stool two spots down, the gap between them small enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and tequila the second she sits. He knows who she is: Clara Bennett, ex-wife of the summer league’s general manager, divorced three months prior, the woman he’d exchanged polite hellos with at team barbecues for 10 years, always off-limits, always marked as someone else’s. She flags the bartender, asks for a lime for her margarita, and when the bartender waves off her request to say he’s busy restocking the cooler, Rafe grabs the extra lime wedge he’d gotten for his own beer, passes it across the gap between them. Their fingers brush when she takes it, her nails chipped pale pink, her skin cool from holding her frozen drink, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, already mentally kicking himself for crossing an invisible line.
She laughs, soft, and leans forward a little, her elbow brushing the edge of his notebook. “I saw you at the game tonight,” she says, her voice loud enough to cut over the George Strait track playing on the jukebox. “You were writing so fast I thought your pen was gonna break when that shortstop hit that slam.” He blinks, surprised she’d noticed him, and shrugs, flipping his notebook shut like he’s hiding something. “Kid’s got talent, just needs to fix his swing,” he says, and she nods, takes a sip of her margarita, the salt sticking to her lower lip.
He tells himself he should leave. He’s got a 6 a.m. drive to San Antonio to watch another game, he doesn’t need to get tangled up with his boss’s ex-wife, doesn’t need to break his own rule about not getting involved with anyone tied to the league. But she keeps talking, tells him her ex used to forbid her from coming to games alone, said it was “unprofessional” for her to hang around the players, that she’d distract them. She leans in closer when she says it, her knee brushing his under the bar by accident, and he doesn’t move his leg away. The fabric of her sundress is soft against the worn denim of his jeans, and he can feel the heat of her leg through the material, a quiet thrum he hasn’t felt in years.
He finds himself talking back, telling her about his ex-wife leaving, about the way he’d spent 12 years sleeping in hotel rooms alone, convinced that anyone who got close to him would leave the second he had to hit the road for a scouting trip. She nods like she gets it, tells him she left her ex because he forgot her birthday three years in a row, spent every night poring over prospect rankings instead of talking to her. “We’re both stupid for letting work take all the good parts, huh?” she says, and he laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months.
The bartender calls last call an hour later, and they walk out into the parking lot together, the air still thick with humidity, crickets chirping loud from the trees lining the street. She stops next to his truck, her sandals scuffing the asphalt, and tilts her head up, the streetlight hitting her cheek so he can see the faint freckle under her left eye he never noticed before, the way her hair is half-fallen out of the ponytail she’d worn to the game. She reaches up, brushes a fleck of peanut shell off the front of his faded Astros flannel, and her hand lingers on his chest for a beat, he can feel the warmth of her palm through the thin fabric, his heart picking up speed like he’s a kid again, waiting to hear if he made the high school team.
He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t make an excuse about having to leave early, doesn’t mumble something about needing to get back to his hotel, doesn’t reach for his notebook to hide behind. He just unlocks the passenger door of his truck, holds it open for her, and she smiles, climbing in, the scent of coconut sunscreen filling the cab the second she sits down.
He drives out to the old baseball field on the edge of town, parks on the grass by the outfield fence, rolls the windows down so the warm night air blows through. He reaches into the cooler behind the seat, pulls out a cold root beer he keeps stashed for late drives when he’s too tired to drink beer, and hands it to her. She takes a sip, leans her head on his shoulder, the soft weight of her against his side feeling more right than anything he’s felt in years. A distant train whistle blows from the other side of town, low and rumbling, while they sit in the quiet. He rests his hand lightly on her knee, and for the first time in over a decade, he doesn’t reach for his scouting notebook to distract himself from the quiet, good thing sitting right next to him.
