Rafe Mendez, 52, has spent 19 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up 2017 F150, eating more gas station burritos than home-cooked meals, and avoiding any conversation that doesn’t involve fastball velocity or infield footwork. His biggest flaw, one he’s only admitted to himself after three too many bourbons on lonely hotel nights, is that he’s deliberately pushed every person who’s shown a flicker of interest in him away since his wife left him for a scout from the Cardinals organization eight years prior. He’s convinced attachment equals distraction, and distraction costs him signing bonuses.
He’s in western Ohio on a rainy Tuesday, fresh off watching a 17-year-old shortstop hit two home runs in a high school playoff game, when he ducks into the only bar within 15 miles of his motel, a cinder-block dive called The Dugout with a neon Budweiser sign flickering in the window. The air is thick with the smell of fried pickles and stale beer, pool balls clacking in the back and Johnny Cash crackling over the jukebox. He grabs the last empty stool at the bar, tucks his scouting notebook under his thigh so no one can peek at his notes, and orders a bourbon on the rocks, warning the bartender not to skimp on the ice.
The bar is half full, a mix of farmers in mud-caked overalls, a handful of the high school players messing around by the pool table, and a woman in a faded Ohio State flannel and high-waisted jeans who slides onto the stool two spots down from him 10 minutes later. He glances at her once, notes the silver streaks in her dark hair, the smudge of dirt on her left boot, the way she twists a silver hoop earring when she orders a glass of dry red wine, then goes back to staring at his drink.
When the group of teen players gets rowdy, yelling over a bad pool shot, she shifts closer to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep through his thin scout’s jacket. The fabric is worn thin at the elbow, and he can feel the warmth of her skin through it, sharp and bright against the chill of the bar’s overworked AC. She nods at the notebook peeking out from under his thigh. “Saw you at the game earlier. You here for Javi?”
Rafe freezes. Fraternizing with player family during the evaluation period is a fireable offense. He’s about to lie, say he’s just a fan passing through, when she laughs, low and warm, the sound cutting through the jukebox’s track. “Relax. I’m Lena, Javi’s stepmom. He already signed his letter of intent to LSU, he’s not going pro out of high school. Your notes are safe with me.”
He relaxes, just a little. They talk over the hum of the bar, her leaning in every time a group of regulars yells over their drinks, her breath brushing the edge of his ear when she tells a story about Javi accidentally hitting a baseball through their kitchen window last month. When she reaches across the bar to grab a napkin, her knuckle brushes the back of his hand where it’s wrapped around his sweating bourbon glass, and he doesn’t flinch, like he usually does when someone touches him unprompted. He notices the faint scar on her wrist, the chipped red nail polish on her fingers, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs at his terrible joke about umpires being legally blind.
Halfway through their third round, she mentions she’s filing for divorce from Javi’s dad next month, that they’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms for a year, that she only stayed as long as she did to make sure Javi got through his high school playoff season. Rafe feels that familiar twist of guilt in his gut, the voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that he’s here to work, that he’ll just end up hurt again if he lets himself get close. He pushes the voice down, for the first time in years, because the way she’s looking at him, like she actually cares what he has to say about more than just baseball, is worth the risk.
When the bar closes at 1 a.m., they step out into the parking lot, the rain falling soft and warm, sticking to his hair and the collar of his jacket. She leans against the passenger side of his truck, her boots propped on the rusted running board, and he steps closer, close enough that he can smell the vanilla lotion she’s wearing mixed with the faint tang of red wine on her breath. He brushes a stray strand of wet hair off her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone, and when she tilts her chin up to him, he kisses her, slow and soft, the rain dripping down the back of his neck, the distant rumble of thunder rolling over the cornfields surrounding the bar.
They stay like that for 10 minutes, leaning against the side of his truck, kissing like they’ve got all the time in the world, no deadlines, no scouting reports, no messy pasts hanging over their heads. When she pulls back, she’s grinning, her lips pink and swollen, her hair stuck to her forehead. He grabs a pen from his shirt pocket, scribbles his cell number on the back of a scrap of scouting report he tears out of his notebook, and shoves it in her hand. “I’m back in this area in two weeks to scout a pitcher over in Toledo. I can swing through here first. If you want.”
She tucks the scrap of paper into the pocket of her jeans, pats it twice like she’s making sure it won’t fall out, then leans in to kiss his cheek, her lips warm against his cold, rain-soaked skin. “I’ll be waiting.”
He stays leaned against the side of his truck long after she pulls out of the parking lot, sipping a cold beer he grabs from the cooler in the back, watching her taillights fade down the dark two-lane highway, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to get in the truck and drive as fast as he can away from anything that feels like good news.
