Manny Ruiz, 53, has scouted minor league baseball for the Tampa Bay Rays for 18 years, and he’s stubborn enough to drive 12 hours through a Florida thunderstorm to watch a 19-year-old shortstop take three at bats, even when his left knee aches so bad he can barely climb the bleachers. He’s been widowed six years, and his biggest flaw is that he’d rather sleep in his truck on a cinder block parking lot than ask a stranger for a couch to crash on, or admit he’s lonely enough to consider showing up to the VFW’s monthly senior mixers before he talks himself out of it. He’s at the town’s Fourth of July street fair because his neighbor left a free beer ticket on his porch, and he’s got nothing better to do than avoid the group of retired high school coaches who keep waving him over to set him up with their divorced cousins.
He trips over a cracked curb a few feet from the lemonade stand, his work boot catching on a loose chunk of asphalt, and he nearly slams his shoulder into a woman in a yellow sundress holding a paper cup full of pink lemonade and a chocolate cupcake with blue frosting. The lemonade sloshes over the edge, soaking the front of his faded Rays t-shirt and splattering a wet splotch right above her hip. He stammers out an apology, already stepping back to bolt, before he recognizes her. Lila Marlow. Ex-wife of Jake Tatum, his high school baseball rival, the guy who spent four years talking trash about Manny’s curveball and spread the rumor that Manny intentionally hit him with a fastball in the 1992 district championship.
She laughs, loud and warm, wiping a drop of lemonade off her cheek with the back of her hand, and doesn’t step away. They’re standing so close Manny can smell coconut sunscreen and vanilla on her, can see the tiny silver strands mixed in with her dark brown hair, the faint scar above her left eyebrow he’s never forgotten. He carried her to the school nurse that same 1992 championship game, when she fell off the top bleacher trying to catch a foul ball, and Jake took all the credit, told everyone he’d been the one to carry her. Manny never corrected him, too petty to give Jake the satisfaction of addressing the lie, too awkward to talk to Lila back then anyway.
He tugs at the hem of his wet shirt, ready to mumble another apology and leave, when she wraps her fingers around his wrist, light enough that he could pull away if he wanted. “Wait, you’re Manny Ruiz, right? The scout who found that kid from Sebring last year who got drafted straight to Double A? My nephew plays travel ball, he’s got your autograph on his glove.” Manny blinks. No one except the other scouts and his late wife ever paid that much attention to his work. He nods, and she gestures to an empty picnic table tucked under an oak tree, away from the crowd. “C’mon, I got extra napkins in my bag. I owe you a thank you, anyway. I knew you were the one who carried me to the nurse that day. Jake lied about it for years.”
They sit side by side on the splintered wood bench, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts, and Manny finds himself talking more than he has in months, telling her about the kid from a small town outside Ocala he’s been scouting, about the way his knee aches after long drives, about the stupid grudge he held against Jake for 30 years that he now realizes was a waste of time. She tells him she left Jake 12 years ago, that she runs the small bakery on Main Street, that she makes a peach pie that sells out within 20 minutes every Saturday. The first firework goes off overhead, bright red, and she leans in a little closer, her shoulder pressing against his, when the boom rumbles through his chest. He brushes a stray piece of firework ash off her bare shoulder, his fingers brushing her warm skin, and neither of them pulls away.
By the time the last firework fades, the crowd is dispersing, kids screaming as they drag glow sticks through the grass, the smell of charcoal and burnt hot dogs still hanging in the air. Lila stands, wiping cupcake crumbs off her sundress, and holds her hand out to him. “I got a whole peach pie cooling on my kitchen counter right now. You wanna come split it? I even got vanilla ice cream in the freezer.” Manny hesitates for half a second, his old instinct to make up an excuse about having game tapes to watch rising up, before he takes her hand. He tucks her free hand into the crook of his elbow as they walk down the dark sidewalk, the distant sound of kids laughing fading behind them, and for the first time in six years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make up an excuse to leave early.
