Ronan O’Malley, 51, minor league baseball scout for the Cleveland Guardians’ High-A affiliate, leans against a scruffy white pine at the edge of the town fire department’s annual pig roast, sweating through the sleeves of his faded gray flannel. He’s only here because his college roommate, now the fire chief, cornered him at the hardware store that morning and threatened to cancel his fire permit for the brush pile he burns every fall if he skipped again. Four years since his wife Maggie died of ovarian cancer, he’s avoided every town event, preferring to spend his off days holed up in his cabin in the woods, or on the road 220 days a year, crisscrossing Ohio and western Pennsylvania scouting high school and DIII prospects, hauling a radar gun and a folding camp chair in the back of his beat-up 2018 F150. He’s got a scar across his left eyebrow from a line drive that clipped him at a game last spring, and calluses so thick on his throwing hand he can pick up a hot coal off a grill without flinching. His worst flaw? He’s convinced any romantic interest from anyone would make him look like he’s spitting on Maggie’s memory, and the town gossip mill has been salivating over his love life since the day after her funeral, so he’s kept everyone at arm’s length.
The air smells like charcoal, vinegar-based barbecue sauce, and cheap draft beer, the hum of the generator for the string lights mixing with the sound of kids screaming on the inflatable bounce house by the fire station bay. He’s halfway through his second Yuengling, trying to ignore the sideways glances from the group of retirees sitting at the picnic table 10 feet away, when he spots her. Lila Marquez, 38, the new county 911 dispatcher he’d only ever talked to on the phone back in January, when he’d called to report a 60-foot oak that had fallen across his driveway in an ice storm. He’d been gruff, half-asleep, then apologized three times for calling the non-emergency line for something so trivial, and she’d laughed, warm and throaty, and told him it was fine, she’d send a public works truck out first thing. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded fire department volunteer tee that’s tied at the waist, and scuffed work boots, passing out paper plates of pulled pork to the line of people waiting by the grill, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid that falls over her shoulder.
She catches him staring, and holds his eye contact for three full beats, longer than casual, a little smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, before she turns back to hand a plate to a kid with a face smudged with ketchup. Ronan looks away fast, heat crawling up his neck, feels stupid for getting caught. He’s 13 years older than her, for Christ’s sake, everyone in town sees him as the sad widower who’s off limits, and Lila’s got a reputation for being sharp, no patience for the sad sack guys who hang around the town bar hitting on her. He’s just about to finish his beer and bail, when she walks over, holding two plates stacked high with pork and coleslaw, a cherry limeade in her other hand.
“Recognized your voice in my head the second I saw you slouching over here,” she says, holding out one of the plates. Their fingers brush when he takes it, and he feels the rough callus on her thumb, from 12-hour shifts typing into the dispatch console, the warmth of her skin seeping into his for half a second before she pulls her hand back. She leans against the pine next to him, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint sweet tang of cherry vape on her clothes, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she shifts her weight. “Everyone says you’re a hermit who only comes into town for beer and motor oil. Figured I’d make sure you didn’t leave without eating something.”
Ronan snorts, takes a bite of the pork, the vinegar tang hitting his tongue. “The chief blackmailed me. Said he’d yank my burn permit if I skipped. I was gonna leave in 10 minutes.”
“Too bad,” she says, tilting her head up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the string light. “I’ve been waiting to hear the story about the line drive that gave you that scar. The guys at the station said you didn’t even leave the game, just wiped the blood off with your hoodie and kept taking pitch speeds.”
He hesitates, then tells her. Talks about the 17-year-old lefty in Akron who threw 97 with a curveball that dropped so fast it made batters trip over their own feet, the line drive that came off the bat so fast he didn’t have time to duck, the kid who ran over to check on him, white as a sheet, convinced he’d killed him. Lila laughs so hard at the part where he told the kid he’d seen worse from his wife’s cat when she was mad, that she snorts, and claps a hand over her mouth, her knee bumping his when she doubles over.
They wander off after they finish eating, away from the crowd, sitting on the tailgate of his F150 parked at the edge of the field, the grass tall enough that it brushes the bottom of the truck bed. The crickets are loud enough here that the noise of the pig roast fades to a low hum, the string lights so far away they look like scattered stars, the golden light of the sunset bleeding pink across the sky. Lila leans against his arm, her warm weight pressing into his side, and he doesn’t move away, even though the little voice in his head is screaming that everyone will talk, that he’s betraying Maggie, that this is a bad idea.
“I talked to Maggie a few times, back when I first moved here,” Lila says quietly, picking at a loose thread on her shorts. “She came to the dispatch center to drop off cookies for us during that big blizzard five years ago. Said you were out plowing driveways for the old folks on your road. She talked about you nonstop, how you’d drive three hours to get her favorite pecan pie from that bakery in Pittsburgh. I don’t think she’d want you sitting alone in your cabin every night, you know?”
Ronan’s throat tightens. He’s heard that a hundred times, from his sister, from the chief, from Maggie’s mom, but it sounds different coming from her, no pity, just quiet honesty. He’s about to say something, when she turns her face up to his, her hand brushing the scar on his eyebrow, and kisses him. Slow, soft, tastes like cherry limeade and the sip of beer she stole from his can 10 minutes earlier. He kisses her back, his hand coming up to rest on her waist, the rough denim of her shorts warm under his palm, and for the first time in four years, he doesn’t feel guilty.
The fire department siren goes off then, loud and sharp, for the 50/50 raffle, and Lila pulls back, grinning, her cheeks pink, her lipstick smudged a little. She slips a crumpled piece of notebook paper with her phone number scrawled on it into the breast pocket of his flannel, taps it with her finger. “Call me when you get back from scouting fall league in October. I know a little diner outside of Columbus that makes pecan pie almost as good as the one in Pittsburgh.”
She hops off the tailgate, and walks back toward the crowd, her boots kicking up dust in the golden light of the setting sun. Ronan sits there for a full minute, twisting the crumpled paper between his calloused fingers, the ghost of her kiss still on his mouth, before he pushes off the tailgate and follows her.
