Rudy Galvan, 53, had been a minor league baseball scout for 18 years, long enough to know that the best finds never showed up on top prospect lists, and the worst nights usually ended in a dive bar with sticky floors and a jukebox stuck on 1980s country. He’d blown off the post-showcase cookout an hour prior, tired of listening to other scouts brag about signing bonuses they’d never actually negotiate, and had parked his beat-up Ford F-150 outside the only bar in Carterville, Illinois that served fried catfish crisp enough to cut through the dust of a 12-hour day at the ballpark. His only flaw, the one he’d carried for 12 years ever since his ex-wife left him for a St. Louis real estate agent while he was on the road scouting a left-handed pitcher in Iowa, was that he refused to let anyone get close enough to see how burnt out he really was. He’d skipped every family wedding, every high school reunion, every casual date his sister tried to set him up on, convinced anyone who stuck around would eventually leave the second his work schedule got messy.
He was scribbling notes on a crumpled scouting report, beer sweating in his left hand, when he caught the scent of coconut sunscreen and dill pickle brine drifting over the bar. He looked up, and for a second he didn’t recognize the woman sliding onto the stool two seats down from him, tight cutoff shorts and a faded Cardinals tee, sun streaks in her dark hair, until she smiled and said his name. It was Lila Hale, Coach Hale’s youngest daughter, the same kid he’d last seen at 12 years old selling lemonade outside her dad’s house before a summer league game. She was 21 now, home for the summer from college, running the ballpark concession stand to save up for her sports management masters.
He nodded, awkward at first, still half-seeing the pigtailed kid who’d once asked him to sign a t-ball card of himself she’d dug out of her dad’s memorabilia box. She shifted closer to ask how long he was in town, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh by accident when she moved to grab a napkin from the holder between them, and he flinched like he’d been burned. He felt a sharp twist of guilt in his gut, told himself he was being a creep for even noticing how the sun had kissed her shoulders freckled brown, for liking the sound of her laugh when he made a dumb joke about the 19-year-old pitcher that afternoon who’d thrown a no-hitter but forgotten his cleats in the hotel room.
She ordered a basket of garlic fries and pushed half of them across the bar to him without asking, her knuckle brushing his when he reached for one. She leaned in when he talked about the difference between a fastball with tail and one that just cuts, so close he could smell the spearmint gum she was chewing under the pickle and sunscreen scent, her elbow brushing his every time she gestured to emphasize a point. No one had asked him about the small, boring parts of his job in years, not even his old coworkers who only cared about how big a bonus a prospect could net them. He found himself telling her about the 12-hour drives, the crummy motel beds, the box of vintage minor league trading cards he kept under the seat of his truck, the stuff he never told anyone.
He fought the pull the whole time, alternating between wanting to lean in closer and wanting to grab his keys and drive out of town before he did something stupid. He’d known her since she was in diapers, for Christ’s sake, Coach Hale had been the one who’d gotten him his first scouting gig, who’d bailed him out of jail when he’d gotten drunk and crashed his old Camaro the week after his wife left. This was the definition of a bad idea, the kind of thing that would get him run out of every small town ballpark within 200 miles, the kind of thing he’d spent 12 years avoiding just to keep his life simple.
When she said she’d had a crush on him since she was 16, when he’d come to her dad’s 50th birthday party and fixed her broken mountain bike for her after no one else could figure out what was wrong with the chain, he froze. He stared at her, and she didn’t look away, her dark eyes steady, no hint of shyness or joke in her expression. She said guys her age only cared about fantasy football and TikTok, that they never listened to her when she talked about wanting to run a minor league team one day, that Rudy was the only person she’d ever met who actually got it.
He reached out before he could think better of it, brushing a stray strand of hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear, his thumb grazing the soft skin of her cheek for half a second. She leaned into the touch, not pulling away, and the guilt in his chest softened, just a little, under the warmth of being seen for the first time in over a decade. She asked if he wanted to drive up to the bluff overlooking the town, to watch the fireworks the county was setting off for the end of the summer fair, and he nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
He paid their tab, grabbed his scouting notes off the bar, and held the passenger door of his truck open for her. When she climbed in, her palm rested on his forearm for half a second, warm and steady, before she pulled away to reach for her seatbelt.
