Manny Ruiz, 62, retired south Texas high school woodshop teacher, leans against a splintered picnic table at the county fair, sweating through the collar of his faded pearl snap. He drove 45 minutes from his small ranch outside town to judge the student woodworking entries, a gig he’s taken every year since he quit teaching 10 years prior. His left forearm bears a thin, pale scar from a 2010 table saw accident, the same incident that pushed him into early retirement, and he picks at the edge of it unconsciously while he sips lukewarm draft beer. He’s avoided any kind of romantic entanglement for 15 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 22-year-old kid who’d been in his senior year woodshop class, convinced anyone who showed interest in him only wanted something he couldn’t or wouldn’t give.
The beer garden is packed, the air thick with the smell of fried Oreos, horse manure, and cheap coconut sunscreen. The rodeo announcer’s drawl booms across the fairgrounds from the adjacent arena, mixing with the tinny twang of a cover band playing 90s country near the carnival rides. He’s about to toss his empty can and head home when a woman in a lemon-yellow sundress slides onto the bench across from him, setting a peach seltzer on the table between them. All the other tables are full, so he doesn’t say anything at first, just nods politely, until she laughs, low and warm, and says his name like she’s known him her whole life.
It’s Elara Voss, the kid who used to live next door to him when she was a teenager. He’d not seen her since she left for college in Austin 30 years prior, when she was 17 with dyed blue hair and a habit of sneaking into his workshop to watch him carve duck decoys. Now she’s 47, freckles across her nose, sun-bleached honey hair pulled back in a loose braid, the same crinkle around her eyes when she smiles. He’s aware of her proximity first, her bare foot brushing his under the table by accident when she shifts her weight, the heat of her calf lingering even after she pulls back. He feels a jolt he hasn’t felt in decades, immediately followed by a sharp twist of guilt—she’s married to the county sheriff, for Christ’s sake, everyone in town knows that, and she was barely old enough to drive when he last spoke to her.
She doesn’t seem to notice his discomfort, leaning across the table to yell over the sound of the band, telling him she moved back to town a year ago, got a job running the local animal shelter. She says she saw his name on the judge’s list posted by the exhibit hall, had been looking for him all afternoon. She reaches for a napkin a second later, her hand brushing his calloused knuckles where he’s gripping his beer can, and she doesn’t yank her hand away like he expects her to, just holds it there for a beat, her skin soft and warm against his. She mentions the scar on his forearm, says she still remembers the day he got it saving her from falling off his workbench when she was 12, that she’d carried that memory with her like a lucky charm through every bad date and bad job and bad fight with her husband.
The sun dips below the horizon while they talk, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine, and the string lights strung above the beer garden flicker on, casting gold across her cheeks. He finds himself laughing at her stories about the misfit dogs at the shelter, telling her dumb old woodshop jokes he hasn’t told since he retired, forgetting for a second that anyone else exists around them. She leans in even closer, her shoulder almost touching his now, and he can smell jasmine on her perfume, can taste the peach of her seltzer on her breath when she speaks. She says she and the sheriff separated three months prior, no one in town knows yet, that she’s been staying in a tiny rental cabin out by the lake, no neighbors for miles.
He hesitates when she asks him to come back with her, every warning bell in his head going off at once. He thinks about the gossip that would spread if anyone saw them, about the sheriff’s well-documented temper, about how he’d spent 15 years building a life where he didn’t have to care what anyone thought, where he didn’t have to risk getting his heart broken again. He wants to say no, wants to make an excuse about feeding his three hound dogs and drive home to his empty ranch, but he looks at her, at the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll turn her down, and he nods before he can talk himself out of it.
They agree to leave separately, meet by the line of port-a-potties at the far edge of the fairgrounds where no one will see them. He drives his beat-up Ford F150 slow behind her silver sedan down the dark dirt road leading to the lake, dust kicking up behind the tires, the radio playing old Willie Nelson low enough that the words blur together. She parks first, gets out of her car, and meets him on the porch of the small, wood-sided cabin, fireflies dancing in the oak trees around them. She reaches up to brush a stray strand of gray hair off his forehead, and he doesn’t flinch.
