Rafe Ortega, 62, retired cattle auctioneer and current owner of a small feed and seed shop outside Abilene, Texas, leans against the cinder block back wall of the community center, lukewarm domestic beer in a dented plastic cup, when it happens. His 16-year-old granddaughter begged him to chaperone her birthday group of friends, swore she’d muck out his three horse stalls and stack all his hay bales for a month if he said yes, so he caved, figured he’d hang in the shadows and leave as soon as she was ready to go. The band’s fiddle player is sawing so loud his molars hum, and he’s half-convinced he can slip out early without her noticing, when a woman trips over the warped floorboard two feet from his scuffed work boots.
He reacts fast, years of dodging spooked steers and wobbly auction blocks, shoots his hand out and wraps it around her elbow to steady her. The beer in his other hand sloshes over the rim of the cup, drips dark onto the knee of his worn denim jeans, and he doesn’t even notice. Her skin is warm through the thin flannel of her shirt, and she smells like lavender hand lotion and lemon Pledge, sharp and sweet, nothing like the hay and diesel he’s surrounded by 24/7. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the fiddle noise, and looks up at him, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she laughs a lot. “About time someone saved me from that stupid board,” she says, brushing a strand of gray-streaked chestnut hair behind her ear. “I’ve face-planted twice here this month, the teens already have a meme of me on the high school Facebook page.”
He recognizes her immediately: Clara, the new town librarian, she’s been coming into his feed store once a week for the last two months buying black oil sunflower seeds for the bird feeder outside the library front door. He’d noticed her, of course, had even looked forward to her visits, had started keeping a bag of her preferred seeds by the register so she didn’t have to walk all the way to the back of the store past the dusty farm equipment. But he’d never said more than three words to her, always rang her up fast, looked away before he could think too hard about how nice her smile was, or how her voice sounded like rain on a tin roof when she asked how his week was going.
She teases him for hiding in the back, says he looks like he’s waiting for a stray bull to charge through the front doors instead of watching a bunch of teens do the two-step. He snorts, admits he doesn’t dance, never has. She calls bullshit, says everyone can dance if they stop overthinking where their feet are supposed to go. The guilt hits him sharp, right in the chest, the same way it does every time he even considers talking to a woman who isn’t his daughter or his sister. Linda, his wife of 34 years, died of breast cancer eight years prior, and he’s clung to rigid, self-imposed rules ever since: no social events that don’t involve family, no conversations with women that last longer than it takes to ring up a bag of feed, no joy that feels like it doesn’t belong to her memory. But then Clara leans in a little closer, so her shoulder brushes his, and he can feel the heat of her arm through his heavy denim jacket, and the scolding voice in his head gets quieter.
She tells him she moved to town three months ago from Austin, got sick of the traffic and the $7 cold brew and the patrons who screamed at her for enforcing late fees, wanted a library where she knew every regular’s name and their dog’s name too. He tells her about his old auction days, the time a goat stole his cowboy hat mid-bid and ran through the crowd with it, and she laughs so hard she snorts, then claps a hand over her mouth, cheeks pink with embarrassment, and he laughs too, a real laugh, not the tight polite one he uses for customers who complain about seed prices.
The band switches to a slow song, familiar, the first note makes his throat go tight. It’s the song he and Linda danced to at their wedding, the only song he ever danced to with her, the one she’d play on the kitchen record player every Saturday morning while she made blueberry pancakes, begging him to spin her around the linoleum, him always saying no, saying he was too tired, too sore, too busy. He goes still, and Clara notices, her smile softening, asks if he’s okay. He tells her the whole story, no filter, tells her about the regret he carries around like a lead weight in his front pocket, about how he hasn’t even listened to that song since the day of her funeral.
She doesn’t say she’s sorry, doesn’t pat his arm like most people do when he mentions Linda. She just holds out her hand, her nails short, chipped pale blue polish, a thin silver ring shaped like an open book on her index finger. “Linda would probably kick your ass if she saw you wasting a perfectly good slow song standing in the dark,” she says, and it’s not pity, it’s truth, and he knows she’s right.
He stares at her hand for ten long seconds, then takes it. Her palm is calloused from turning hundreds of book pages a day, fits perfectly in his, rough from hauling 50-pound feed bags and fixing fence posts on his small property. They step onto the dance floor, and he’s clumsy at first, steps on the toe of her scuffed work boot, she laughs and tells him to relax, she’s got two left feet too. He settles into it, his hand light on her waist, her head tilts up so she’s looking at him, her hair brushes his jaw once when they turn, and he can smell that lavender again, hear the soft strum of the guitar, the murmur of other dancers around them, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel guilty for feeling good.
The song ends, and neither of them pulls away right away. She smiles up at him, says she closes the library at 6 on Saturdays, the diner on Main has pecan pie that’s almost as good as her grandma’s, if he wants to meet her there. He nods, says he’ll be there, he’ll even bring a bag of her favorite sunflower seeds, for the birds. His granddaughter yells from across the room, holding up her phone, grinning so wide her dimples show, and he rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop smiling. He looks back down at Clara, and she’s still holding his hand, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle soft, slow, like she’s got all the time in the world.
