Rudy Gallegos, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, had only driven to the Palisade Peach Festival to drop off six custom Adirondack chairs for the veteran’s center silent auction. He’d planned to turn right back around, skip the crowds, the overpriced kettle corn, the well-meaning neighbors who still patted his arm and asked if he was “holding up okay” seven years after his wife Mia’s stroke. The AC in his 2008 F-150 died two weeks prior, though, and midday heat sat heavy enough to make his jeans stick to vinyl seats, so he ducked into the first shaded tent he saw: a pop-up wine bar run by a local vineyard.
He was still wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his calloused hand when he looked up and recognized her. Lena Marquez, Mia’s younger cousin, 58, who he’d only seen a handful of times since the funeral, back when he was too deep in grief to string more than two words together. She leaned across the rough wood counter, silver hoop earrings catching slanted sun filtering through the canvas, a smudge of pale peach juice on the edge of her left jaw. She wore the same faded work boots she’d had at his 1990 wedding, scuffed at the toes, caked with reddish vineyard dirt, and a thin leather bracelet strung with a single turquoise chip he’d bought for the entire wedding party that year.
“Took you long enough to stop by,” she said, her voice still low and rough, like she spent half her days yelling over harvest equipment, which he remembered she did, running the vineyard’s day-to-day operations now. She slid a frosted glass of peach rosé across the counter before he could order. On the house, she mouthed, when he reached for his wallet. Their fingers brushed when he took the glass, her skin warm, calloused at the tips from pruning vines, and he pulled his hand back fast, like he’d touched a hot iron.
He’d always felt weird around her, even when he was married. That stupid, unspoken spark, the kind that made him look twice at her across holiday dinner tables, the kind that made him stutter when she asked him for help fixing her fence a year before Mia got sick. He’d never acted on it, never even said a word to anyone, but guilt lingered anyway, heavy as an oak plank across his chest. Disgust warred with something lighter, hungrier, in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling he’d spent seven years actively stamping out.
The tent smelled like cut alfalfa, cold citrus, and fried peach pies from the food truck parked right outside, fryer oil curling under the canvas edges. A bluegrass band played three tents over, fiddle trilling loud enough to make ice in his glass clink. She stepped around the counter to point out the auction lot where his chairs were set up, her hip brushing his as she leaned in, and she didn’t step back for three full seconds, her shoulder pressed to his, linen of her shirt soft against his bare forearm. She held his gaze when she said she’d bid on one of the chairs, that she’d always loved how he built things to last, no flimsy joints, no cheap shortcuts, and there was no pity in her eyes, no sad widower pat on the arm, just something warm, something familiar.
He didn’t even realize he’d stayed for a second glass until she said she was taking her break in ten, asked if he wanted to walk the old peach orchard behind the fairgrounds. The same orchard they’d snuck into after his bachelor party, back when he was 27 and too nervous to even hold her hand, even when Mia was passed out drunk in the back of her friend’s car, laughing so hard she snort-laughed when they stumbled out with armfuls of peaches. Guilt twisted sharp in his chest then, and he almost said no, almost made up an excuse about needing to get back to the half-finished rocking chair in his garage. Then she said, quiet enough only he could hear, “Mia always told me if you ever stopped moping around after she was gone, I should kick your ass until you agreed to go get a drink with me.”
He stared at her for a long minute, heat seeping through the back of his shirt, bluegrass fiddle still wailing, a kid running past the tent screaming with a cotton candy stick twice the size of his head. He thought of the note Mia had left stuck to the fridge the week before she died, the one that said Don’t be alone forever, you idiot, in her messy scrawl, the one he’d tucked in his wallet and hadn’t looked at in two years. He nodded.
The grass in the orchard was dry and crinkly under his work boots, peaches heavy on the branches, sweet and sun-warmed when she plucked one off a low-hanging bough, wiped it on the front of her shirt, and handed it to him. He took a bite, juice running down his chin, and she laughed, soft and low, swiping the juice off with her thumb, her thumb brushing the corner of his lip for half a second. He didn’t pull away.
He tucks a stray silver strand of hair behind her ear, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel guilty for smiling.
