Rico Marquez is 53, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league scout for the Cincinnati Reds farm system, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up Ford F-150, sleeping in motel beds that smell like old cigarette smoke and generic laundry detergent. His biggest flaw, the one his younger sister nags him about every Thanksgiving, is that he’s carried a grudge against his ex-wife so long it’s carved a permanent line between his eyebrows. She left him 12 years ago for a high school principal, had short curly red hair, taught 4th grade, and ever since, Rico has swerved hard around any woman who fits even half that description—turned down three different women who worked in local schools in the last year alone, no second thought.
He’s back in his hometown of Mount Vernon, Ohio, for the annual Apple Butter Festival, only stopping because he scouted a left-handed pitcher at the local high school that afternoon who throws a 92 mph fastball and has a curveball that drops like a stone. He’s leaning against the bar in the beer tent, sipping a cold IPA, when someone slams into his left side hard enough to slosh half her spiced cider down the front of his faded gray flannel.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, stepping in immediately, dabbing at the wet spot with a crumpled paper napkin she pulls from her jeans pocket. She’s short, maybe 5’2”, has short curly auburn hair that’s half pulled back with a scuffed leather cord, and there’s flecks of neon glitter stuck to her left cheek. Her knuckles brush his forearm through the flannel, warm from holding the hot cider cup, and Rico freezes. He can smell cinnamon and vanilla on her cable-knit sweater, and when she looks up at him, hazel eyes flecked with gold, she holds his gaze for three full beats longer than polite, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she notices he doesn’t step back.
Rico’s first instinct is to mumble an excuse, turn around, walk to the other end of the tent. She’s an elementary school teacher, he can tell from the glitter, the lanyard around her neck with a kid’s crayon drawing of a cat clipped to it, exactly the kind of woman he’s avoided for a decade. But she doesn’t let him slip away, already waving the bartender down to order him another beer to make up for the one he almost spilled in the collision.
They end up leaning against the bar side by side, the air thick with the smell of fried dough and hickory wood smoke, a local cover band playing old Johnny Cash in the corner so loud he can feel the bass thrum in his work boots. She teases him about his faded Reds cap, the brim frayed so bad the logo is half peeled off, says she’s never seen a baseball fan that committed to a hat that looks like it’s been through a tornado. He teases her back about the glitter, says she looks like a craft store exploded on her face, and she laughs, low and warm, nothing like his ex’s high, shrill cackle that used to make his teeth ache.
He tells her about the pitcher he scouted that afternoon, how the kid cried in the dugout after he walked three batters in a row, how most scouts would write that off as a lack of grit but Rico sees it as passion, the kind that makes players fight harder when the game is on the line. She nods, actually listens, no fake smile, no checking her phone while he talks. Says she works with 2nd graders, sees that kind of passion every day, the kids who scream when they mess up a painting but stay after class for an hour to fix it. She’s 48, divorced for 7 years, has a son in college studying mechanical engineering, only moved to town two years ago.
Every few minutes something brushes against him: her elbow when she reaches for a salted peanut from the bowl on the bar, her shoulder when a group of rowdy college kids squeezes past, her knee when they both shift to get a better look at the band. He keeps waiting for the twist, for the moment she reminds him of his ex, for the familiar prickle of resentment to rise up, but it never comes. When the first firework goes off overhead, bright white, making the whole tent light up, a group of drunk teens barrels through the crowd, and she steps in closer, her chest pressing against his arm, to avoid getting knocked over.
“You wanna get out of here?” she yells over the noise, tilting her head up so he can hear her over the fireworks and the band. “The river walk is empty this time of night, we can watch the rest of the show without getting run over by a bunch of 19 year olds who snuck in their own vodka.”
Rico hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head screaming that this is a mistake, that he’s going to get burned again, that people like her always leave. But she’s still holding his gaze, her hand resting light on his forearm, and he nods before he can overthink it.
They walk the two blocks down to the Kokosing River, the ground crunching under their boots with crumpled red and orange maple leaves, the fireworks echoing off the water’s surface. They sit down on an old weathered wooden bench half hidden by oak trees, and when she laces her fingers through his, calloused from years of holding paintbrushes and wiping crayon off desks, he doesn’t pull away. The fireworks are reflected in the water, bursts of blue and green and red rippling across the slow current, and she leans her head on his shoulder, warm and solid. A burst of red firework blooms overhead, gilding the edge of her curly hair, and he realizes he can’t remember the last time he didn’t feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
