Manny Ruiz, 61, has spent the last eight years treating his small Ohio hometown like little more than a crash pad between minor league scouting trips. A stubborn cuss who still holds a grudge against his ex-wife for leaving him for a suburban real estate broker, he’s avoided every family gathering, church potluck, and VFW fish fry his army buddy has begged him to attend, convinced everyone in town still picks her side. The only reason he’s at the fish fry tonight is his buddy threatened to hide the keys to his beat-up F150, the one he packs with radar guns and scouting notebooks every March, if he didn’t show up for at least an hour.
He’s leaning against the cinder block wall by the beer cooler, nursing a lukewarm Pabst, the air thick with the smell of fried cod, hushpuppies, and old cigarette smoke, when he reaches for a second can at the exact same time as the woman next to him. Their hands brush. Her knuckles are cold from the iced sweet tea she’s holding, and he spots the tiny, faded scar on her index finger, the one she got when he taught her to bait a hook at the family lake house when she was 12. It’s Lila, his ex-wife’s niece, the one he used to drive to soccer practice and help with algebra homework before the divorce. He freezes, half-ready to yank his hand back and bolt for the door, but she holds eye contact a beat too long, a slow, lopsided smirk tugging at her lip. “Manny Ruiz. I thought you’d buried yourself in a dugout somewhere for good.”
She’s 38 now, a travel nurse who just moved back to town to care for her grandma, and she doesn’t wait for him to answer before she nods toward a rickety corner table far from the crowd of yelling retirees and flag-waving veterans. He follows, against his better judgment, his boots crunching over peanut shells scattered across the linoleum floor. The jukebox in the corner spits out Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” as they sit, and every time she shifts in her seat, her knee brushes his under the table, warm through the frayed denim of his work jeans. He feels a hot twist of guilt in his gut, half disgust at himself for noticing the way her faded flannel shirt hugs her shoulders, the way she tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear when she laughs, but he can’t bring himself to move away.
She tells him she never bought his ex’s story about the divorce, that she always thought he got a raw deal, that she used to have a stupid teenage crush on him back when he’d bring her baseball cards from the minor league games he scouted. His throat goes dry. He wants to tell her this is wrong, that everyone in town would talk if they saw them sitting together, that he’s too old for this kind of nonsense, but the words stick in his throat. She’s the first person in years who hasn’t asked him for a favor, who hasn’t talked to him like he’s some broken, bitter old man who only cares about fastball velocity. When she leans in to tell a story about the time he accidentally caught a bluegill in her hair at the lake, her breath smells like cinnamon gum, and he finds himself leaning in too, so close their shoulders are pressed together.
When the fish fry wraps up at 9, she asks if he still has that stack of 1980s Reds cards he used to keep in his coffee table, if she can come see them. He hesitates for half a second, then nods. The October air is sharp enough to make his cheeks burn when they walk out to the truck, and she grabs his arm to steady herself when she almost trips over a cracked curb, her palm warm through the fabric of his flannel. He fumbles with his front door key when they get to his house, his hands shaking a little more than he wants to admit, and when he finally gets the lock to turn, she steps inside first, turns to face him, and brushes a fleck of fried batter off his jaw with her thumb before he can even reach for the light switch.
