Roland Voss, 52, minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds, had spent 10 months of the year living out of his dented 2008 F-150, surviving gas station coffee, microwave burritos, and the quiet thrill of spotting a 17-year-old pitcher with a 94 mph fastball and a good head on his shoulders. He’d come back to his tiny rental in Lima, Ohio, for the off-season three days prior, and had already turned down three invites to the local dive bar’s weekly trivia night, until his former high school teammate Jimmie had showed up on his porch with a six pack and practically dragged him out the door. Roland hated trivia. Hated forced small talk, hated the way strangers stared when they found out what he did for work, hated the quiet pity people gave him when they remembered his wife left him eight years prior for a pharmaceutical rep she’d met at a diabetes conference.
The bar smelled like fried cheese curds, stale beer, and pine-scented cleaner, the jukebox in the corner spitting out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts, the walls lined with faded high school football jerseys and a framed photo of the 1975 Reds World Series team that Roland had donated back in 2019. Jimmie herded him to a table in the back, and Roland stopped short when he saw who was already sitting there: Clara Marlow, the new town librarian, the woman Jimmie had been trying to set him up with for six months straight. He’d turned every one of those invites down too, had convinced himself he didn’t have time for dating, didn’t have the energy to go through the whole song and dance of small talk and first dates and inevitable disappointment.
He slid into the booth across from Jimmie’s wife, right next to Clara, his thigh brushing hers for half a second before he shifted as far away as he could, the vinyl of the booth sticky under his jeans. She smelled like lavender hand cream and cinnamon gum, wore a faded navy flannel over a plain black tank, a thin silver scar snaking across her left wrist from a childhood bike crash she’d mentioned once in passing when they’d run into each other at the grocery store three months prior. She smiled at him, crinkles fanning out at the corners of her eyes, and held out a bowl of warm salted pretzels. “Jimmie said you’re the only person in this town who knows anything about pre-2000 baseball. We need you if we’re gonna beat the team of community college kids that’s won three weeks in a row.”
Roland grunted, grabbed a pretzel, the coarse salt sticking to his fingertips. The trivia host yelled out the first question, about 90s sitcom theme songs, and Clara leaned in to ask him what he thought the answer was, her shoulder pressing into his bicep, her breath warm against his ear over the roar of the bar. He told her it was the theme from *Fresh Prince of Bel-Air*, and she laughed, a low, throaty sound that made the back of his neck feel hot, and scribbled it down on the answer sheet. Their knees kept brushing under the table, not hard, not on purpose, every time one of them shifted to grab a beer or reach for another pretzel, and Roland didn’t move away after the third time. He found himself telling her about a 19-year-old catcher he’d scouted in West Virginia back in August, who could throw out a runner trying to steal second before the batter even finished swinging, and she leaned in the whole time, eyes wide, asking follow up questions, no polite nods, no bored glances at her phone. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone listen to him talk about work like it mattered, not just a weird hobby he wasted his life on.
The final question popped up on the projector: Who was the MVP of the 1972 World Series? Roland knew it was Gene Tenace before the host even finished reading the question, reached for the answer sheet at the same time Clara did, their hands brushing, her fingers calloused from turning library book pages all day, warm against his. He froze for half a second, and she grinned, scribbled the answer down, and passed it to the host before he could say a word. Their team won by two points, the table cheering, Jimmie slamming his beer down so hard foam sloshed over the edge. The free round of tequila shots showed up five minutes later, and Roland clinked his glass against Clara’s, the salt from the rim sticking to his lip.
He offered to buy her a proper drink after the shots, and she said yes, they moved to a pair of stools at the far end of the bar, away from the noise of the trivia crowd. She told him she’d been reading old baseball biographies for fun, had just finished a book about Roberto Clemente, and Roland spent 20 minutes rambling about the time he’d met Clemente’s son at a minor league game in Pittsburgh back in 2017. She didn’t cut him off, didn’t check her phone, just sipped her bourbon and smiled, her foot brushing his under the bar every few minutes.
They left an hour later, the October air crisp enough to make his nose run, the sidewalk littered with crumpled red and orange maple leaves that crunched under their boots. She tripped over a raised curb half way to the parking lot, and he grabbed her elbow to steady her, his hand wrapping around her forearm, the fabric of her flannel soft under his palm. She laughed, leaning into his side for half a second, and he didn’t let go of her elbow when she steadied herself. He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place, he had a rare taped copy of the 1995 World Series he’d been meaning to rewatch, and she nodded, her hair falling in her face when she looked up at him.
He fumbled for his keys in his jacket pocket, grinning so wide his cheeks ached, when she laced her free hand through his, her palm warm and calloused and perfect against his.
