Rafe Jimenez, 53, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds, logging 40,000 miles a year in a beat-up F-150 with a cooler of cheap beer in the back and a notebook stuffed in the glove compartment full of scribbled notes on curveball velocity and batting stance quirks. His biggest flaw is that he’s carried a chip on his shoulder since his wife left him for a high school baseball coach 12 years back, so he avoids small-town community gatherings like the plague, sticking to dive bars and motel rooms instead of the festivals and fish fries that dot the Midwest summer calendar. He’s only at the Meigs County Peach Festival at all because the left-handed pitcher he’s here to scout is playing in a celebrity softball game later that afternoon, and the 92-degree heat has him dripping sweat through the back of his navy scouting windbreaker before he even makes it through the gate.
He heads straight for the beer tent, orders an IPA from a kid in a 4-H shirt, and leans against the split-rail fence separating the tent from the peach cobbler stand next door. The woman running the stand is wiping peach juice off her forearms with a stained dish towel, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, strands sticking to her sweat-shiny neck. He recognizes her immediately: Clara Hale, wife of the town mayor who’s currently running for state representative, whose face is plastered on every yard sign for 20 miles. He’s seen her in the local paper, standing next to her husband in a tailored dress with a fixed, tight smile, but right now she’s in cutoff jeans and a faded Johnny Cash t-shirt, no makeup, and she smirks when she catches him staring.
She holds out a paper plate with a small square of cobbler on it, leaning over the fence far enough that her shoulder brushes his bicep. “You look like you need something sweet to cut that beer,” she says, and when he reaches for the plate their fingers brush for half a second, her skin warm and sticky from peach syrup, calloused at the fingertips from kneading dough, nothing like the soft, perfectly manicured hands he’d seen in her husband’s campaign ads. He takes the bite, the crust flaky, the peaches ripe enough to burst with sugar and a hint of bourbon, and he raises his eyebrows in surprise. She laughs, a low, rough sound that cuts through the twang of the bluegrass band playing at the other end of the festival grounds. “Don’t tell my husband,” she says, leaning in a little closer so no one walking by can hear, the scent of cinnamon and ripe peaches rolling off her. “He says I shouldn’t put alcohol in the cobbler at public events. Bad for the family values brand.”
Rafe snorts, takes a long sip of his beer. He knows he should walk away. Getting tangled up with a politician’s wife in a town this small is the kind of stupid drama he’s spent over a decade avoiding, the kind of thing that could get him sideways with half the town when he’s just here to scout a kid who could be in the majors in three years. But he stays, leaning against the fence next to her, talking between her serving customers, telling her stories about driving through the Ozarks in a snowstorm to see a catcher in a tiny town in Arkansas, about the time a 19-year-old pitcher threw a no-hitter in front of 12 people in a field in Iowa. She listens, leaning her hip against the fence so her leg presses against his, not pulling away even when a group of her husband’s campaign volunteers walks past, waving. He notices she drops the fake, bright smile she gives them the second they turn their backs, rolling her eyes when they’re out of earshot. “I hate this,” she says quietly, picking at a loose thread on her t-shirt. “I hate shaking hands and pretending I care about zoning laws and going to fancy fundraisers where everyone eats tiny food that tastes like cardboard. I just want to bake.”
Her husband walks over 10 minutes later, in a crisp button down, shaking hands with everyone within a 10-foot radius, giving Clara a quick, stiff kiss on the cheek before telling her he’s heading to a campaign event across the county, he’ll be home late. She nods, doesn’t even look up from wiping down the counter. The second he’s out of sight, she turns back to Rafe, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with something he hasn’t seen in a woman in years, no pretense, no game playing, just plain, unapologetic want. “I made a batch of peach bourbon jam this morning,” she says, wiping her hands on her towel again, her voice a little lower than before. “No one’s tasted it yet. You wanna come back to my place and try it? The house is empty for three hours, minimum.”
Rafe hesitates for half a second, thinking about the yard signs, the campaign, the fact that everyone in this town knows who she is, what getting caught would mean for both of them. Then he looks at her, the way she’s biting her lower lip, the streak of peach juice on her jaw, and he nods. He tosses his empty beer can in the trash, slings his scouting bag over his shoulder, and follows her out from behind the cobbler stand. She grabs his wrist lightly when a group of her husband’s supporters walks toward them, pulling him into the shadow of an oak tree to let them pass, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his windbreaker. They walk down a side street lined with peach orchards, the sound of the festival fading behind them, the sun dipping low enough to paint the sky pink and orange over the cornfields at the edge of town. She laces her fingers through his as they turn onto her street, the rough pads of her fingers fitting perfectly between his.
