Rico Morales, 51, has spent the last eight years living out of a dented Ford F-150, crisscrossing Texas and Oklahoma as a minor league baseball scout for a low-level Midwest farm team. He’s rigid to a fault, keeps his schedule color-coded in a beat-up leather notebook, hasn’t let anyone sit in his passenger seat for longer than a 20-minute drive to a field since his ex-wife left him for a comparative literature professor back in 2015. He’d skipped the annual VFW post barbecue in his hometown for six years running, but this year he’d finished scouting a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher with a 94 mph fastball an hour away, and the pull of cheap brisket and cold Shiner Bock was too strong to ignore.
The bar attached to the post was packed wall to wall by 8 p.m., the air thick with smoke from the pit, the sticky sweet smell of margarita mix, and the low roar of old friends catching up. The only open stool was next to Jenna Hale, whose ex-husband had stolen Rico’s starting shortstop spot senior year of high school, then married her three months after graduation. Rico hadn’t spoken to her more than three times in 30 years, but he’d heard through town gossip she’d divorced the guy two years prior, now ran the local no-kill animal shelter out of a converted barn on the edge of town. He slid onto the stool, nodded at her by way of greeting, and flagged down the bartender.
Their knees knocked under the bar when a group of guys from the local fire department squeezed past to get to the jukebox, and she didn’t yank hers away like he expected. She told him about the litter of beagle puppies someone had dumped on her shelter porch the week before, he told her about the lefty he’d scouted that afternoon who’d struck out 14 batters then cried after he dropped his favorite gum under the dugout bench. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and Rico felt something tight in his chest loosen, something he’d forgotten was even there. Part of him was screaming that this was stupid, that everyone in the bar knew who her ex was, that they’d be the talk of the town by morning, that he was leaving for a 10-day stretch scouting in Oklahoma in 72 hours and had no business leaning in closer when she talked, no business noticing how the neon Coors sign behind the bar made her eyes look dark gold.
By 10 p.m. the crowd had thinned out, and a soft warm rain started tapping against the bar windows. Jenna groaned when she checked her phone, said her old truck’s battery had died when she got there, she’d forgotten to call a mechanic. “I can give you a jump,” Rico said before he could talk himself out of it. They walked out into the parking lot, the rain light enough that it only dotted the shoulders of his faded flannel shirt, cool on his sunburnt neck. He rummaged in the back of his truck for jumper cables, his knuckles scraping against a spare case of baseballs, and she held her phone flashlight up for him, her hand brushing his when she leaned in to make sure the light was hitting the battery terminals. “I always thought you were the nicer one back then, you know,” she said quietly, so quiet he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of the rain on the truck roof. “My ex used to talk so much trash about you, but I saw you stay after practice every Tuesday to help the JV kids learn to field ground balls.”
Rico froze for half a second, then stood up, wiping grease off his hands on his jeans. She was standing close enough that he could feel the heat off her shoulder, could taste the lime from her margarita on the air between them. He didn’t overthink it, just leaned down and kissed her, slow, no rush, her hand coming up to rest on his wrist, her lips soft, tasting like cherry pie she’d eaten for dessert. When they pulled apart, she was smiling, tucking that same strand of hair behind her ear.
He got her truck running in three minutes flat. She pulled a pen out of her purse, grabbed the old scouting sheet he’d used to jot down the lefty’s pitch counts that afternoon, and scribbled her number on the back, under the notes about the kid’s wonky curveball. “Call me when you get back from Oklahoma,” she said, leaning against her truck door. “The beagle puppies will be old enough to adopt by then, and the diner off the highway just started making peach pie on Wednesdays.” He nodded, folded the paper up, and tucked it in the front pocket of his notebook, not the back where he shoved all the disposable scouting notes. He watched her drive away, taillights fading into the rain, then opened his truck door, rolled the window all the way down, and turned the key in the ignition.
