Manny Ruiz, 51, has been a minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds farm system for 19 years, and he’s got a scar across his left eyebrow from a time he crashed his pickup driving through a West Virginia snowstorm to see a left-handed pitcher he swore would make the bigs. His biggest flaw? He’d rather sleep in a motel with a leaky roof and an ESPN replay than answer a text from someone asking him to stay for dinner. It’s a habit he picked up after his ex-wife left him 17 years prior, when he missed their first wedding anniversary to chase a 19-year-old catcher who flamed out of A ball two years later. He’s sitting at a splintered picnic table in a small Ohio town’s summer beer garden, post-high school showcase, sweating through the collar of his navy scout polo, a half-drunk pilsner sweating in a paper coozie in front of him. The air smells like fried onion rings and cut grass, crickets hum just loud enough to cut through the chatter of nearby families and old guys arguing about the Reds’ latest bullpen collapse.
She slides onto the bench across from him without asking first, sets a cherry hard seltzer down so close to his clipboard that the condensation drips onto his notes about the shortstop’s 92 mph throw to first. Her forearm brushes his when she reaches to grab a crumpled napkin that blew onto his side of the table, skin warm and a little salty from the afternoon sun, and she holds eye contact a full two beats longer than polite when she apologizes. Manny’s first thought is that he should tell her he’s working, that he doesn’t have time to chat. His second thought is that her hair is the color of honey pulled straight from the comb, streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, and she’s wearing a faded Pearl Jam tour tee that fits just tight enough to catch the curve of her waist when she shifts to cross her legs. She says she’s Lila, stepmom to the shortstop he’s been scribbling notes about all game, married to the high school’s head baseball coach. Manny’s throat goes tight. That’s the line, right? Scouting 101: you don’t mess with a prospect’s family, you don’t mess with a coach’s wife, you keep your head down and your notes straight and you drive out of town the second the showcase ends.
He tries to keep the conversation professional at first, asks about the shortstop’s work ethic, if he’s had any arm injuries in the last year. She laughs, low and warm, and says her stepson already committed to Ohio State, that she recognized the Reds logo on his polo the second he sat down in the stands, that she only came over because he looked like he hadn’t smiled once in the last three hours. Manny snorts, admits he’s been so wrapped up in hitting metrics and fielding percentages he hasn’t had a conversation that didn’t revolve around baseball in three months. She leans in, elbows on the table, and her knee brushes his under the wood when she shifts closer, telling him about how her husband is out of town for a coaches clinic all weekend, how she bailed on a girls’ night because she didn’t feel like listening to her friends complain about their ex-husbands for four hours. He can smell coconut sunscreen on her, mixed with the faint sweet scent of the cherry seltzer she’s sipping, and every time she laughs, she tilts her head just a little to the left, like she’s letting him see the freckles scattered across her cheekbone.
He fights the urge to reach across the table and touch one of those freckles for 45 minutes, telling himself he’s an idiot, that he could lose his job over this, that he’s too old for stupid, impulsive hookups that end with awkward goodbyes in a motel parking lot. But when she asks if he wants to walk down to the creek behind the beer garden to watch the fireflies, he nods before he can think better of it. The gravel crunches under their boots as they walk, shoulders brushing every three or four steps, and no one else is on the dirt path, the noise of the beer garden fading behind them until all they can hear is the gurgle of the creek and the chirp of crickets. When they get to the small wooden footbridge, she stops, turns to him, and rests her hand on his bicep, fingers pressing just hard enough through the thin fabric of his polo to send a jolt up his spine. She kisses him before he can say anything, lips soft, tasting like cherry seltzer and mint gum, and he doesn’t pull away.
When they pull apart a minute later, she grins, brushing a strand of hair that fell across his forehead away with her thumb. She says she knows he’s leaving town in three days, that she’s not looking for anything complicated, just someone who doesn’t talk about batting averages for every second of their conversation. Manny laughs, pulls his phone out of his pocket, hands it to her so she can type her number in. She adds a tiny firefly emoji next to her name, and when she hands it back, she brushes her thumb across his knuckles. They walk back to the beer garden together, slow, and when he drops her off at her SUV in the parking lot, she leans in and kisses his cheek, tells him she’ll text him when she gets home. He stands there for a minute after she drives away, sipping the last of his warm pilsner, watching fireflies blink in the trees at the edge of the lot.
