Rafe Jimenez, 54, had scouted minor league baseball for the Cincinnati Reds farm system for 22 years, and he’d perfected the art of looking unapproachable. It came in handy when overzealous parents cornered him at high school games to beg for a shot for their kid, when chatty seatmates on cross-country buses wanted to hear old ballpark stories, when well-meaning neighbors in his tiny northwest Ohio town tried to drag him to potlucks and mixers after his ex-wife left him for a Tampa realtor eight years prior. He’d shown up to the annual Main Street chili cookoff only because his old college teammate, who owned the dive bar hosting the event, had threatened to cut off his weekly Wednesday bourbon tab if he bailed. He was leaning against the bar’s rough brick exterior, plastic bowl of three-alarm chili in one hand, cold lager in the other, half watching the Ohio State game playing on the outdoor TV, when a woman’s elbow knocked his bowl just enough to send a dollop of chili dripping down the leg of his worn jeans.
He swore under his breath, twisting to grab a napkin from the stack on the folding table next to him, and his hand landed on top of hers at the same time. She was a few inches shorter than him, wearing a faded red and black flannel and a beat-up 1989 Cleveland Indians cap pulled low over curly brown hair, a smudge of blue ink on her left thumb. Her skin was warm, calloused at the fingertips, and she didn’t yank her hand away right away. She held eye contact for three full beats, the corner of her mouth twitching up, before she lifted her hand and nodded at the chili stain on his jeans. “My bad. I was trying to avoid the mayor, who’s been trying to convince me to host a children’s story hour at the bookstore every Saturday, and I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Rafe grunted, dabbing at the stain with a napkin, already half ready to brush her off and retreat to his usual corner booth inside. He’d seen her around town before, knew she’d bought the old used bookstore on Main six months prior, but he’d never spoken to her. He’d made it a rule not to speak to new people. New people asked questions. “No harm done. Jeans were already stained anyway.” He nodded at her cap, the old script logo faded almost to white. “Nice hat. Haven’t seen one of those in years.”
Her grin widened, and she leaned in a fraction, close enough that he could smell vanilla on her hair and smoked paprika on her clothes. “Found it in a box of donations last month. Figured if I was going to live in Ohio, I had to commit to the local sports trauma. You’re Rafe, right? The scout who growls at anyone who tries to sit next to him at the bar. I’ve been coming in on Wednesdays for months, and I’ve never seen you say more than two words to anyone besides the bartender.”
The observation made him bristle at first, the familiar twist of defensiveness rising in his chest, the part of him that had spent eight years convincing himself he liked being alone, that casual connections weren’t worth the risk of getting burned again. But she wasn’t teasing him to be mean. There was no pity in her eyes, no nosy tilt to her head, just amusement, like she thought his grumpy act was funny instead of sad. He found himself smiling back, a small, rusty thing he hadn’t used on a stranger in years. “I don’t growl. I just don’t like small talk.”
“Good. I hate small talk too.” She lifted the cloth bag slung over her shoulder, pulled out a glass jar full of pale orange peach pie filling, and waggled it at him. “That’s why I brought this instead of entering the chili contest. Chili leads to arguments about whether beans belong in it. Pie leads to people shutting up and eating, which is a way better use of time. You wanna split it? I’ve got plastic spoons in my bag.”
He said yes before he could talk himself out of it. They ended up sitting on the tailgate of his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 parked half a block down the street, away from the noise of the cookoff, the crisp October air nipping at their cheeks as they passed the jar back and forth. The pie filling was sweet, a little tangy, homemade, she said, from peaches she’d picked at her aunt’s orchard in southern Indiana over the summer. Their shoulders pressed together when she shifted to get a better look at a group of kids chasing a dog down the street, her knee brushing his when she laughed at his story about a 19-year-old prospect who’d tried to sneak a pet ferret onto the team bus earlier that season. He’d spent so long convincing himself he was fine alone that the warmth of her next to him felt foreign, almost wrong, like he was breaking a rule he’d written for himself. He kept waiting for the familiar itch to leave, to go back to his quiet empty house, to stop talking, but it never came.
When the jar was empty, she wiped a smudge of pie filling off his upper lip with her thumb, her touch soft, lingering, and he didn’t flinch away. “I wasn’t avoiding the mayor earlier, by the way,” she said, her voice quieter now, no trace of her earlier teasing. “I was trying to work up the nerve to come talk to you. I almost bailed three times.”
The admission hung in the cold air between them, and for a second Rafe’s brain went completely blank, the part of him that had convinced himself no one would ever bother trying to get close to him short-circuiting. He’d spent eight years walling himself off, disgusted by the idea of dating, of letting someone see the messy parts of him that his ex-wife had left behind, convinced all that was waiting for him was more heartbreak. But sitting there next to her, the taste of peaches still on his tongue, the sound of the bar’s jukebox playing old Johnny Cash drifting down the street, he realized that disgust had never been about other people. It had been about fear, about being too cowardly to try again.
He lifted his hand, brushed a stray curl that had fallen out of her braid behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the soft skin of her cheek. She leaned into the touch, her eyes never leaving his. “I’ve got a box of 1989 Indians baseball cards back at my house I’ve been meaning to sort,” he said, his voice rougher than he meant it to be. “And a bottle of bourbon I’ve been saving for no good reason. You wanna come over?”
She nodded, grinning so wide the corners of her eyes crinkled, and slipped her hand into his when he hopped off the tailgate. The cold October wind bit at their cheeks as they walked toward his truck, their laced fingers warm enough to chase away the last of the chill he’d carried with him for eight years.