Manny Ruiz, 53, a minor league baseball scout for the Iowa Cubs’ Class A affiliate, had just spent three hours on splintered bleachers watching a 17-year-old lefty throw 92 mph with a curve that dropped like a stone. His jeans were streaked with red clay dust, his faded team polo stuck to his back with sweat, and the roar of the post-game crowd had left a low hum in his ears. He cut through the county fair crowds, skipping the fried oreo booth he usually hit on scouting trips, heading straight for the craft beer tent before he made the two-hour drive back to his empty, quiet ranch house outside Des Moines.
He spotted her immediately, and froze mid-step, half-tempted to turn and walk the other way. Lila Marlow was 38 now, her dark brown hair braided down one shoulder, a tiny baseball stitch tattoo curling around her left wrist, cut-off denim shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee that rode up a half inch when she reached for a keg tap. The last time he’d spoken to her, she was 17, covered in softball dirt, yelling at her teammates for dropping a fly ball during a game his daughter was playing in. His daughter was 25 now, living in Portland, hadn’t spoken to Lila since high school graduation, but some stupid, rigid part of Manny’s brain still saw her as a kid, as off-limits. He’d avoided this tent for three straight years specifically to not have to talk to her, to not have to acknowledge the dumb, unbidden little jolts he’d felt the first time he’d seen her working here, all grown up.
She spotted him before he could duck away, grinning wide, wiping her hands on a rag slung over her hip. She called his name over the hum of the tent, and he was too polite to bolt, so he stepped up to the bar, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets like he was hiding something. She poured his usual hazy IPA without him asking, sliding it across the sticky plastic bar, and their fingers brushed when he grabbed it. Her skin was cold from handling ice all afternoon, and he yanked his hand back like he’d been burned, face heating up under his scruff. She laughed, low and warm, leaning her elbows on the bar so she was closer, the faint smell of coconut sunscreen and lime seltzer drifting over to him. She teased him about the dented passenger door on his beat-up silver F150 parked by the fair entrance, said she’d recognize that truck anywhere, remembered him dropping his daughter off at softball practice every Saturday with a cooler full of cold Gatorade for the whole team.
He found himself leaning against the bar, sipping his beer, talking longer than he’d planned. He told her about the lefty pitcher who’d thrown a no-hitter that afternoon then threw up in the dugout from nerves, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, her knee brushing his jeans where she was leaning over the bar. A group of rowdy teens yelled for refills, and she stepped back, winking at him over her shoulder before she turned to pour their drinks, and he realized he wasn’t even thinking about the drive home anymore, wasn’t thinking about the stack of scouting reports sitting on his kitchen table.
The first firework burst overhead right as last call blared over the fair speakers, painting the sky neon pink, and the whole tent crowd cheered, stepping back to get a better view. Lila slipped around the bar, holding two fresh cold IPAs, and stopped right next to him, her shoulder pressing warm against his through their thin shirts. She pointed up at a blue burst that faded into silver sparks, and her hand brushed his jaw when she turned to yell over the noise, her palm soft against his three-day stubble. He didn’t pull away. She said she’d had a crush on him since she was 17, thought he was the only dad at the softball fields who didn’t scream at the girls for messing up, who’d stay late to help fix the broken pitching machine even when his daughter’s practice was long over.
He admitted he’d avoided the tent for three years because he felt like a creep for noticing how pretty she was, and she snort-laughed again, loud enough that the couple next to them glanced over, grinning. She said that was the dumbest, sweetest thing she’d heard all summer, leaning in a little closer so her hip was pressed to his, as the last of the fireworks faded to wispy gray smoke. The Ferris wheel hummed in the distance, its colored lights spinning slow, and the smell of fried dough drifted over the crowd from the nearby food booths. She tugged lightly on his wrist, nodding toward the small picnic table at the back of the tent, hidden from the foot traffic, said she had a bottle of small batch bourbon stashed under there if he wasn’t in a hurry to get home. He let his hand rest lightly on her lower back as they walked across the tent, the crinkle of discarded fair tickets crunching under his boots.
