Ronan O’Malley, 53, minor league baseball scout, leaned back in the wobbly folding chair at the county fair beer tent and rolled his left ankle to work the throb out of his 20-year-old ACL tear. He’d spent three hours that afternoon hunched in aluminum bleachers watching a 19-year-old lefty with a 94 mph fastball and a terrible attitude, and the last thing he wanted was to run into his ex-wife, who was volunteering at the church pie booth three tents over. He’d spent seven years carefully avoiding every event she attended, a petty grudge he’d nursed since she left him for a D2 college baseball coach he’d personally scouted and recommended for the head job. The flaw had cost him half his friend group, most family holiday invites, and any shot at a relationship that didn’t involve driving an hour out of town to a dive bar no one he knew frequented.
He was halfway through his second pale ale when a woman tripped over the cooler at his feet, sending a cloud of powdered sugar from her plate of deep-fried oreos dusting the front of his faded Reds polo. She yelped, and her hand landed flat on his bad knee when she caught herself, the calluses on her palm rough through the thin denim of his jeans. When she looked up, he recognized her immediately: Lila Marlow, his ex’s 41-year-old cousin, the mouthy teen who’d snuck beers from his garage at every family cookout 15 years prior, now a large animal vet tech with sun-bleached streaks in her brown hair and a faint scar snaking up the outside of her left thigh, visible above the frayed hem of her cutoff jeans.
She laughed when she placed him, swiping at the powdered sugar on his shirt with the back of her other hand, their shoulders brushing when she leaned in. “Well I’ll be. Ronan the baseball hermit. I thought you’d left the state entirely to avoid my cousin.” Her voice was lower than he remembered, roughened from years of yelling at spooked horses, and he could smell coconut sunscreen and root beer on her breath when she tilted her head up to meet his eye. She didn’t move her hand off his knee.
He snorted, nodding at the half-eaten oreos on her plate. “Thought you were the one who yells at people for feeding their dogs table scraps. Hypocrite much?” He didn’t move away, either. The knee pain had gone quiet under the weight of her hand, and he could feel the heat of her thigh inches from his when she pulled the empty chair next to him and sat down, close enough that their elbows knocked every time one of them moved.
She told him about the 4-H horse show she’d been judging all day, about the teen girl who’d won first place with a rescue mustang she’d trained herself, about how his ex had been complaining nonstop for three months about her new husband’s midlife crisis Harley, the one he’d bought instead of fixing their leaky roof. Ronan found himself leaning in when she talked, his gaze drifting to the scar on her thigh, wondering if it was as rough as it looked, if it still ached when the weather turned humid like this. He knew this was a terrible idea. Lila was family, for all intents and purposes, half the people at the fair knew who they were, if anyone saw them together it would get back to his ex before the fireworks ended. He felt a sharp twist of disgust at himself for even noticing how her tank top slid down one shoulder when she gestured, for wanting to tuck the strand of hair falling in her face behind her ear. But he didn’t leave.
The first firework went off with a boom overhead, painting the sky bright red, and the crowd around them surged to their feet, cheering. Lila stumbled when someone’s kid ran past, bumping into her, and Ronan grabbed her waist to steady her, his fingers splayed over the soft cotton of her tank top, her back pressed to his chest. She tilted her head up to look at him, her mouth an inch from his, and he could taste the powdered sugar and root beer on her breath when she exhaled. He didn’t think. He kissed her, and she kissed back, her hands fisting in the back of his polo, the crowd’s cheers fading into background noise.
They stayed that way through the whole 15 minute fireworks show, his arm wrapped tight around her waist, her head resting on his shoulder, their fingers laced together when they weren’t kissing. He didn’t care if anyone saw them, didn’t care if his ex heard about it before the sun came up, didn’t care about the grudge he’d carried for seven years that felt lighter now than it had in months. When the last firework fizzled out, the crowd dispersing around them, she turned in his arms, brushing a stray fleck of ash off his cheek. “I got a little cabin 20 minutes west of town, no neighbors for miles. My dog’s there, he’s friendly.”
Ronan nodded, grabbing his beat-up Cardinals cap off the back of the chair and slapping it on his head, his scouting notebook full of notes on the lefty pitcher left forgotten on the seat. He followed her across the fairgrounds to her beat-up silver pickup, his knee not throbbing at all, even when he climbed up into the passenger seat.
