Ray Garza, 59, senior scout for the Miami Marlins minor league system, slid onto a scuffed vinyl stool at his go-to Pensacola raw bar just as the first quarter of the Ole Miss-Penn State bowl game blared to life above the bar. The air smelled like Old Bay, fried shrimp, and the faint briny tang of oysters getting shucked behind the counter, and the stool stuck a little to the back of his worn jeans, a familiar quirk he’d come to like. He’d sworn off family holidays this year, his siblings bickering over their late mother’s San Antonio home, and had opted instead for 10 days of cheap beer, cold oysters, and zero small talk. He hadn’t dated since his wife left him for a country club golf pro in 2015, had grown comfortable with his uncomplicated routine: drive 40,000 miles a year across the South scouting pitchers, sleep in cheap motels, eat gas station tacos, answer to no one.
A woman slid onto the stool next to him 10 minutes later, her heavy wool coat brushing his bicep as she hung it on the hook between their seats. He caught a whiff of cedar from the coat and soft jasmine perfume, not the cloying stuff older women slathered on at church functions, the kind that faded to warm skin scent after an hour. She ordered a dozen Apalachicola oysters and a vodka tomato shooter, the exact same order he’d just placed, and when he glanced over he spotted the tiny horse tattoo on her wrist, recognized her immediately: Lena Morales, mother of the 19-year-old left-handed pitcher he’d signed out of Mobile three days prior.
His first instinct was to slip off the stool and leave. League rules strictly forbade fraternizing with players’ immediate family, even for a single beer, and he’d spent 12 years clawing his way to senior scout, no way he’d risk that for a pretty woman. But she looked over before he could move, grinning, and tapped his forearm with a polished nail that had a faint chip on the corner. “Thought you were heading back to Texas for Christmas, scout.” Her voice was rough, like she smoked a pack a week, a detail he’d noticed when he sat on her front porch for two hours walking her son through his contract, instead of shoving papers in the kid’s face like every other scout that had rolled through her farm.
He shrugged, took a sip of his shooter, the vodka burning the back of his throat. “Family’s fighting over the will. Figured I’d skip the drama.”
She laughed, loud enough that a couple guys at the end of the bar glanced over. She leaned in to reach for the hot sauce between them, her elbow brushing his bicep again, her knee brushing his under the bar. “Mine’s worse. My son’s off at a training camp in Arizona, my ex is already on his third wife, so I drove down to avoid all the holiday noise.”
They talked for two hours, through the end of the bowl game, through a second round of shooters, through a basket of hushpuppies the bartender slipped them for free. She teased him about the frayed cowboy hat he kept on the stool next to him, he teased her about knowing more about pitching mechanics than half the coaches he worked with. Every time she leaned in to make a point, her shoulder pressed to his for half a second, every time she laughed she tilted her head back, and he could see the faint silver streaks in her dark hair, the tiny scar on her jaw from a yearling kicking her when she was 22. He was torn so bad his chest ached: half of him screamed to leave, to not risk his job, to not open himself up to the mess of another relationship, the other half couldn’t stop staring at her mouth, couldn’t stop thinking about how no one had asked him about his own JUCO ball career, cut short by an elbow blowout, in 30 years.
When the bar started to clear out, she pulled a crumpled pack of menthols from her coat pocket, nodded toward the back deck. “You want one?” He hadn’t smoked in 15 years, but he nodded anyway.
The wind off the Gulf was sharp, carried the smell of oyster beds and diesel from the fishing boats docked nearby. She pulled a lighter from her pocket, leaned in to light his cigarette first, their faces only six inches apart, and he could taste the vodka, oyster, and mint on her breath when she exhaled. “I know the league has rules,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear, “and I know you probably don’t do this kind of thing. But I haven’t stopped thinking about how you listened to my son ramble about his curveball for an hour, like it mattered more than the contract.”
He didn’t say anything for a second, just reached up, brushed a strand of windblown hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She didn’t pull away. “I’ve got a cooler of beer in my truck, and the pier down the road has the best sunset on the coast. No talk of contracts, no talk of the league. Just… whatever.”
She ground her cigarette out under her boot, slipped her hand into his, her palm calloused from mucking stalls, warm against his. “Lead the way, scout.”
They walked to his beat-up 2018 F150, seats covered in old ball caps and crumpled scouting reports, he turned on the Merle Haggard CD he’d had in the player since he bought the truck, and pulled out of the parking lot heading west toward the pier. She rested her hand on the center console, palm up, and he laced his fingers through hers, didn’t say anything about the rulebook tucked in his glove box, didn’t overthink it. The wind off the water whipped through the cracked window, carrying the faint smell of her jasmine perfume, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave early.
