Cole Henderson, 58, leans against a dented folding table at the east Phoenix neighborhood block party, cold Modelo sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around its middle. He’s 11 months retired from the U.S. Forest Service, moved down from central Oregon to save his knees, which ache bad enough on 100-degree days that he’s taken to carrying a foldable cane in the bed of his beat-up 2007 F-150. His flaw, the one he’ll admit to only after three bourbons at the VFW poker game, is that he’s spent seven years frozen in grief after his wife Linda passed, clinging to the deathbed promise he made to never let anyone else take priority over the life they built. He’d told himself dating at his age was for sad, lonely people who couldn’t stand being alone with their own thoughts.
The sun dips pink over the McDowell Mountains, painting the stucco houses a soft rose, when she leans in next to him. He recognizes her from the campaign signs staked in half the lawns on the block: Mara Carter, 56, running for city council on a platform of fixing the cracked sidewalks that sent him sprawling three weeks prior, leaving a purple bruise the size of a dinner plate on his left hip. She’s wearing a white linen shirt unbuttoned one notch past what the HOA would call “appropriate,” frayed cutoff jean shorts, scuffed cowgirl boots caked with red desert dust. There’s a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek, leftover from flipping burgers at the grill earlier, and sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid that slips over her shoulder when she tilts her head to speak.
Her shoulder brushes his bare arm, the linen soft against the sunburnt skin he got last weekend hiking the Superstitions, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and cedar, the same scent Linda used to wear on their camping trips. He tenses, already ready to brush her off, to go back to sipping his beer and watching the kids scream as they run through the pop-up sprinkler. She asks if he’s the guy who called the public works department last week to report the dead oak at the end of the street, the one dropping branches that almost took out a kid on a bike. Her knee knocks his when she shifts her weight to lean against the table, warm denim against his Wranglers, and he has to fight the urge to step closer.
He knows he shouldn’t be enjoying this. He knows the second he gets home, he’ll see Linda’s photo on the fridge, the one of her holding a rainbow trout they caught on their 25th anniversary, and he’ll feel guilty, like he’s betraying her. But when she asks if he wants to slip away from the noise, walk down to the small desert creek that runs behind the subdivision to watch the herons that roost there at dusk, he says yes before he can talk himself out of it.
The walk is quiet at first, the air still thick with heat, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the sound of the party behind them. She stops halfway down the dirt path, wrapping her hand around his bicep to hold him still, her palm calloused from years of gardening, and points to a great blue heron standing perfectly still in the shallow creek water, waiting to strike at a minnow. She doesn’t let go of his arm when they stop, her fingers pressing soft into the muscle there, and when she tilts her head up to look at him, their faces are six inches apart. He can taste the lime and Corona on her breath when she exhales, and he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t loop back to the promise he made seven years prior, just leans down and kisses her, slow, soft, no rush.
She kisses him back, her fingers tangling in the gray hair at the nape of his neck, and for a second, the ache in his knees disappears, the guilt in his chest loosens, like a weight he didn’t know he was carrying finally slipped off his shoulders. When they pull away, she grins, swiping her thumb across his lower lip, and tells him she’s been meaning to talk to him since she saw him haul an 80-pound bag of mulch up his driveway last month, thought he was the grumpiest, sexiest man she’d seen in 12 years, since her ex-husband left. He laughs, a real, deep laugh he hasn’t let out since Linda died, and laces his fingers through hers, his calloused, scarred hands wrapping around hers.
They walk back toward the party slowly, the string lights strung between the oak trees just flickering on, the sound of the band playing “Ring of Fire” drifting down the path. When she squeezes his hand, her thumb brushing the old scar on his knuckle from a chainsaw accident in 2011, he doesn’t look away.
