Manny Ruiz, 53, minor league baseball scout with a pale scar snaking up his left forearm from a broken batting cage incident three years prior, propped his scuffed work boots on the lower rail of the dive bar off Main Street and swirled the last of his bourbon around the bottom of a chipped rocks glass. He’d driven into his small Ohio hometown 48 hours earlier to sign over his late aunt’s house to a local realtor, and had deleted no less than seven 25th high school reunion group chat invites in that time, his jaw tightening every time he saw Jake Carter’s name pop up bragging about his new lifted pickup truck. The bar was half empty, neon Pabst sign buzzing overhead, the faint smell of salted fried peanuts and stale beer clinging to the cracked vinyl booths.
The stool two spots over scraped against the linoleum ten minutes later, and he didn’t look up until a woman’s forearm brushed his when she reached past him to grab a bowl of peanuts from the bar edge. He caught a whiff of vanilla hand lotion and fresh cut pine, and when he glanced over, she was already looking at him, dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew something he didn’t. He recognized her immediately: Lena Marlow, who’d been Jake Carter’s girlfriend senior year, then his wife for 24 years, until the divorce papers went public six months prior, a detail he’d only caught because the local paper’s Facebook page had posted it and half the old graduating class had commented with performative sympathy.
His first instinct was to turn back to the spring training replay on the TV above the bar. He’d spent 25 years avoiding anyone tied to that part of his life, the part where people called him “Scout” like it was an insult, where Jake tripped him in the cafeteria the day he left for his first college baseball tryout, called him a loser who’d never amount to anything driving around to podunk stadiums in the middle of nowhere. Being within three feet of Jake’s ex-wife felt like asking for trouble, like the whole town would be gossiping about it before last call. But she didn’t move away. She ordered a draft IPA, twisted her dented silver wedding ring off and set it on the bar next to her beer, and said she’d seen him pitch behind the gym at least a dozen times senior year, when Jake was too busy getting wasted in the parking lot before football games to pay attention to her.
He blinked, taken aback. No one from high school had ever mentioned watching him practice. He asked her why she never said anything, and she laughed, a low, warm sound, and leaned in a little so she didn’t have to yell over the jukebox playing old Alan Jackson deep cuts. Her knee brushed his under the bar, worn denim on worn denim, and he didn’t shift away. She said Jake would’ve thrown a screaming fit if he’d caught her talking to the “quiet baseball kid”, that she’d always thought he was more interesting than the meatheads who spent all their time bragging about state championship rings they’d won a quarter century prior.
They talked for an hour, then two. She told him she ran the local Christmas tree farm on the edge of town, that she’d bought out Jake’s share of the property after the divorce and had just planted 300 new fir saplings the week prior. He told her about watching 19-year-old kids throw 95 mile an hour fastballs in dusty stadiums in Florida and Arizona, about the time a stray bat hit him in the arm and he’d stayed at the game anyway to finish scouting a left fielder who could run the bases in 13 seconds flat. Every time she laughed, she leaned a little closer, her shoulder brushing his, and when she pointed at the TV to make a joke about the terrible middle relief pitching on screen, her hand rested on his arm for three full seconds before she pulled it back.
When the bartender yelled that last call was in ten minutes, she sighed and said she was supposed to go to the reunion alone the next day, that she’d only RSVP’d to piss Jake off, who was bringing his 26-year-old waitress girlfriend. Manny thought about the empty rental house he was staying in, about the flight back to Tampa he had booked in two days, about the way his chest felt light for the first time since he’d driven into town. He said they should skip the reunion entirely, drive up to the overlook on the old state park road he used to go to before tryouts to clear his head, watch the sun come up. She didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her flannel jacket off the back of the stool, slipped her hand into his, and laced their fingers together, her palm calloused from hauling tree saplings, warm against his.
The drive up the mountain took 20 minutes, windows rolled down, the smell of wild clover and fresh cut hay drifting through the cab, her singing off-key to the 90s country station on the radio. He parked at the overlook, and they leaned against the hood of his rental truck, watching the sky turn soft pink over the miles of cornfields stretching out below them. She stepped closer, wrapped her arms around his waist, and tilted her chin up to kiss him, slow and soft, no rush, no fear of who might drive past and see. He texted his boss before he even climbed back in the truck, told him he was extending his trip by three days, that he’d found a prospect worth sticking around for. When she curled into his side on the drive back into town, her head resting on his shoulder, he deleted the reunion group chat entirely, no second thoughts.
