Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living as a minor league baseball scout, driving 40,000 miles a year across the Midwest to track 19-year-old kids with 95-mile-an-hour fastballs and terrible taste in walk-up music. His biggest flaw, if you ask his older sister, is that he holds a grudge longer than a catcher hangs onto anger at an umpire who blows a third strike call. He’s avoided every town summer cookout in his small Ohio hometown for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife called him selfish in front of 30 guests at their daughter’s graduation party, yelling that he cared more about a kid throwing a ball than his own family. He only caved this year because the owner of his regular dive bar begged him to bring his famous hickory-smoked brisket; their usual caterer bailed after his truck broke down on the highway.
He’s hefting the aluminum tray of brisket onto the food table when his forearm brushes someone else’s, warm and soft under a frayed gingham sundress. He looks down, and it’s Lena Marlow, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the quiet kid who used to tag along to their camping trips back before the divorce. She’s 48 now, with a streak of silver in her dark hair and the same faint scar wrapping around her left wrist, the one she got when she crashed the four-wheeler he let her drive when she was 16, the one he’d held her hand through while the ER doctor stitched it up, even when his ex yelled at him for being irresponsible. She smells like peach cobbler and coconut sunscreen, and she smirks when he stumbles over his hello, like she knows exactly how long he’s been avoiding these events just to skip running into anyone related to his ex.
Thunder cracks out of nowhere, fat raindrops slamming into the pavement before anyone can react, the crowd screaming and scrambling to grab food and coolers before they get soaked. He grabs her wrist without thinking, yanking her out of the way of a teen hauling a cooler of beer that’s slipping out of his grip, and they stumble under the narrow awning of the bar’s back porch, pressed chest to chest for a beat while rain drips off the brim of his cap onto her cheek. She doesn’t wipe it off, just looks up at him with dark, steady eyes, and says she’s had a crush on him since that day in the ER, that she thought he was the kindest man she’d ever met, even when he was panicking about getting in trouble with her cousin. He blinks, stunned, laughs so hard a raindrop falls into his mouth, says he always thought she was too smart to waste time on a guy who lives out of a motel half the year and survives on gas station burritos.
The rain lets up 10 minutes later, leaving the air smelling like cut grass and wet asphalt, the crowd filtering back out to set up folding chairs again. He asks her if she wants to skip the rest of the cookout, and she nods, grabbing the half-empty tin of peach cobbler from the dessert table before anyone can stop her. He drives her out to the small high school baseball field he scouts local prospects at, the outfield fence dotted with chipped paint from decades of foul balls. They sit on the tailgate of his beat up F-150, passing the cobbler tin back and forth between them, watching the sunset paint the sky pink and tangerine over the cornfields past the left field line. He lets her put his lucky Cardinals cap on when the sun glares off the grass right into her eyes, the brim slipping down over her forehead when she grins. He passes her a crumpled napkin to wipe the cobbler filling off her chin, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her jaw, and doesn’t even think about the stack of scouting reports he’s supposed to file when he gets home.
