Rudy Galvez is 62, a retired high school welding instructor, seven years widowed, and stubborn enough that his friends have stopped trying to set him up. He still volunteers three days a week at the local trade school’s shop, makes custom fire pits for the county fair every summer, and drives a beat-up 1987 Ford F-150 with a dented passenger door he’s been meaning to fix for three years. He showed up to the local fire department’s annual cookout only to drop off the custom steel fire pit he welded for the raffle, planned to grab a free chili dog and bolt before anyone could corner him into small talk about his love life.
He almost dropped the 70-pound pit when he spotted her. Marnie Cole, 58, the woman who’d moved into the old Miller place three doors down from his cottage two months prior. Ex-wife of Jimmie Ray Cole, his 1979 senior year football rival, the guy who’d stolen his starting linebacker spot, who he’d seen snap at Marnie so bad at their 20-year high school reunion she’d left crying before the awards even started. Back then, Rudy was the pimply kid who spent every weekend in the shop instead of parties, Marnie the cheerleader who tutored him in algebra once a week, who brought him extra lemon drops and smelled like cherry lip gloss. He’d thought she was way out of his league then, and the sight of her now, sun hitting the gray streaks in her auburn hair, made his throat go dry.
His boot caught on a loose cinder block as he hoisted the pit onto the raffle table, and she stepped over fast, grabbing the edge to steady it. Their hands brushed, both calloused—hers from hauling 80-pound golden retrievers in and out of her mobile pet grooming van, his from 30 years of holding welding torches. The metal was still warm from his truck bed, her laugh bright over the grill’s crackle behind them. “Whoa there, cowboy,” she said, “don’t go busting up the best raffle prize here before anyone gets a shot at it.” He smelled coconut shampoo and fresh cut clover off her, could hear firefighters yelling over a cornhole game ten feet away, a toddler screaming as he chased a butterfly across the grass.
He mumbled an apology and tried to step back, but a fire truck siren blared as a crew pulled out for a brush fire call, and she leaned in to be heard, her shoulder pressing firm to his bicep for three full seconds. Neither pulled away. When the noise died down, she nodded at the faded welding logo on his flannel shirt, said she’d seen sparks flying out of his open garage door at 10 p.m. more than once, asked if he fixed small jobs too. She had a heavy-duty dog crate that cracked along the steel frame earlier that week, she said, couldn’t afford a new one on a groomer’s budget.
His first instinct was to say no. Stupid, decades-old loyalty to a grudge he’d carried for 44 years, the idea of even stepping foot in a house Jimmie Ray had ever lived in made his jaw tighten. But he looked at the smudge of bright blue poodle dye on her left wrist, the way her laugh lines crinkled when she smiled, and the desire to say yes was so sharp it made his chest ache. He hadn’t felt that kind of pull since his wife Linda got sick in 2015. He teased her that he charged a full plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies as payment, and she grinned, said she had a whole jar waiting if he came over right after the cookout.
He stuck around three hours longer than he planned. They sat on a splintered picnic bench, and she told him she’d left Jimmie Ray 12 years prior, after he cheated on her with her cousin and moved to Florida to sell used boats, never coming back. She’d bought the Miller place with her retirement savings, wanted somewhere quiet where she could run her grooming business without HOA rules telling her she couldn’t park her van in the driveway. He told her about Linda, how she’d loved gardening, how he still made her famous peanut butter fudge every Christmas for the trade school kids. She didn’t give him that soft, pitying look everyone else did when he mentioned her name, just nodded and said she’d tried a piece of that fudge at the fair last year, it was the best she’d ever had.
He showed up at her porch at 7 p.m., and she was swinging on the weathered porch swing, barefoot, wearing a faded Johnny Cash t-shirt and cutoff jeans, two glasses of sweet tea sweating on the rail. They didn’t even look at the dog crate for an hour. They talked about the black bear that had been getting into people’s bird feeders all spring, the terrible 80s cover band playing the fair next month, how the local grocery store had stopped selling her favorite pickles. Their knees brushed when she leaned forward to grab her tea, and he reached out without thinking, brushing the faded blue dye off her wrist, his fingers lingering on her warm, soft skin. She didn’t pull away. She told him she’d had a crush on him since she moved in, saw him out in his yard last April shirtless fixing his fence, thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He laughed and told her about the stupid high school grudge, how he’d almost turned her down earlier that day, and she snort-laughed so hard she spilled a little tea on her jeans, said Jimmie Ray wasn’t worth wasting two seconds of thought on, let alone a good thing.
They ordered pepperoni pizza, and since she didn’t have cookies, she gave him a slice of peach pie she’d baked that morning, so sweet it made his teeth hurt. He stayed until fireflies were thick in the oak trees lining her driveway, crickets chirping so loud they drowned out the distant highway hum. When he stood up to leave, he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, polite, the kind of thing you do for a nice neighbor, but she turned her head at the last second, her lips warm and soft against his, and he didn’t even hesitate to kiss her back.
