Elroy Mendez, 62, retired Texas game warden, had not spoken a full sentence to Clara Voss in 22 years. He’d spent those two decades blaming her for blowing up his last wedding anniversary: he’d snuck off to fish the private Colorado stretch behind his cousin’s ranch off-season, and his ex-wife showed up red-faced and screaming before he’d even landed his first bass. He’d been convinced Clara, his ex’s childhood best friend, had ratted him out. He walked right past her at grocery stores, skipped the annual county barbecue three years running when he heard she’d man the bake sale table, even deleted the local hiking Facebook group after she joined. That October Saturday, though, he had nowhere to run. He leaned against the cinder block wall of the old feed store turned pop-up beer garden, boots caked with mesquite dust, half-drunk hazy IPA in one hand, when she spotted him first.
She walked over before he could duck behind the port-a-potty. She wore a faded 1990 Willie Nelson picnic tee, high-waisted carpenter jeans cuffed at the ankle, scuffed work boots caked with the same clay dust he’d seen on her farmers’ market pottery booth. Her dark hair streaked with silver, pulled back in a red bandana, and when she stopped three inches from his boots, he caught lavender hand cream mixed with cedar smoke curling off the fire pit by the picnic tables. “You still hiding from me, Mendez?” she said, grinning, and he noticed the laugh lines fanning from her brown eyes, gold flecks in them he’d never paid enough attention to see before.
He grunted, shifted his weight, almost spilled his beer. “I ain’t hiding. Just got nothing to say to someone who can’t keep their mouth shut.” She laughed, loud and warm, and a guy at the next table glanced over. “Still mad about that fishing trip? I thought you’d have gotten over that by 60.” She leaned against the wall next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep through his worn flannel, heat seeping through the fabric. “For the record? Your ex-wife told me to tell her where you were. She was already cheating on you with that San Antonio real estate guy, wanted an excuse to pick a fight and leave. I didn’t have a choice. She would’ve kicked me out of our shared rent house if I lied.”
That hit him like a buck to the chest. He’d spent 22 years hating the wrong person, letting petty anger cut off someone who’d never actually done anything to him. Disgust curled hot in his gut, sharp and embarrassing, but it tangled fast with something softer, warmer, a pull he’d buried so deep he didn’t even know it was there. He’d always thought she was pretty back when he was married, but he’d written her off as a snitch before he ever got the chance to talk to her. She reached over then, brushed a dry mesquite pod off his flannel front, her thumb brushing the bare skin of his wrist for two slow beats, and he felt the rough callus on her finger pad from working clay all day. She didn’t yank her hand away fast, held his eye contact like she was waiting for him to say something.
He bought her a peach cider next, let her drag him to her pottery studio a half mile down the road after the pop-up closed for the night. The studio was a converted one-car garage, string lights strung across the ceiling, shelves lined with mugs and bowls and small ceramic deer, air thick with wet clay and lemon polish. She rummaged in a cardboard box under the counter for a minute, pulled out a heavy stoneware mug, a tiny carved game warden badge on the side, glaze chipped just a little at the rim. “Made this 10 years ago,” she said, pushing it across the counter to him. “Always felt bad you got caught in the crossfire. Never had the guts to give it to you before.” His hand covered hers when he reached for it, neither pulling away for a long second. He leaned over the counter first, kissed her slow, and she tasted like peach cider and mint gum, her silver hoop earrings brushing his cheek when she tilted her head into it.
They stayed there until the sun dipped below the front oak trees, her showing him how to center a lump of clay on the wheel, his calloused hands over hers on the wet clay, the wheel’s low hum mixing with crickets outside. He left with the mug tucked in his work jacket pocket, fingers still dusted with clay, and when he pulled into his cabin’s dirt driveway an hour later, he pulled out his phone before he even turned the truck off. He typed a text asking if she wanted to fish that same Colorado stretch with him next weekend, no snitching, no ex-wives, no drama, and hit send before he could overthink it. His phone buzzed 30 seconds later, a photo of a cooler packed with beer and peaches, followed by a winky face emoji. He leaned back against the truck seat, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, and took a sip of water out of the new mug.
