Ray Garza, 62, retired border patrol K9 handler, leans against the dented side of his 2008 Silverado, twisting the cap off a cold Shiner Bock. He spent 31 years enforcing every rule, big and small, so rigid he still sets his coffee maker for 5:47 a.m. even though he hasn’t had a shift in four years. His wife of 34 years passed from ovarian cancer in 2019, and he hasn’t so much as flirted with a woman since, convinced any kind of fun after loss was some kind of betrayal. The monthly rib cookoff in his tiny West Texas town is the only thing he lets himself leave the house for on weekends, when he’s not patching up old bird dog crates for the local animal shelter.
The air smells like hickory smoke, vinegar-based sauce, and the sharp crisp of October mesquite leaves underfoot. He’s wiping a smudge of rib grease off his faded Carhartt sleeve when he spots her, weaving through the crowd of cowboy hat-clad regulars with a tray of peach cobbler samples held over her head. It’s Lila Mendez, his old patrol partner’s only daughter, the girl he’d watched sneak sips of his beer when she was 16, the one who’d cried to him when her first boyfriend dumped her senior year. She’s 48 now, moved back to town two months prior after a messy divorce from a lawyer in Austin, opened a small pastry shop on Main Street. He’d avoided running into her on purpose, scared the little jolt he’d felt seeing her photo in the local paper was something he shouldn’t entertain.
She spots him before he can slip around the side of his truck, waves so hard a dollop of cobbler filling sloshes over the edge of a paper cup. She cuts through the crowd fast, boots crunching over discarded peanut shells, and stops so close he can smell vanilla lotion and cinnamon mixed with the smoked pork hanging in the air. “Ray Garza, I thought you were hiding from me,” she says, grinning, and holds out a sample cup. When he reaches for it, their fingers brush, and he flinches like he touched a hot grill, his face going hot. Her fingers are soft, but there’s a rough callus on her index finger from kneading dough 12 hours a day, and he can’t stop replaying the split second of contact for three full beats.
They sit on a splintered picnic table off to the side of the cookoff grounds, out of the line of sight of most of the regulars. She teases him about the time he tripped over her golden retriever puppy during a K9 training drill in 2008, landed face first in a patch of prickly pear, and lied to his supervisor that he’d tripped over a cinder block. She leans in when she laughs, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh every time she shifts, and he has to fight the urge to tuck the stray strand of auburn hair that keeps falling in her face behind her ear. He feels guilty, like he’s doing something wrong, like his old partner would knock him upside the head if he saw them sitting this close, talking about nothing and everything. But no one’s asked him about his bird dog crate project in months, no one remembers that he always wanted to open a small rescue for retired working dogs when he retired, not even his own kids who live in Dallas and call once every six weeks.
The sun dips low, painting the sky pink and orange, and a light drizzle starts to fall, making the pavement glisten. The crowd thins out fast, people packing up coolers and folding chairs, yelling goodbyes across the lot. She stands up first, wobbling a little when she steps over a muddy puddle, and grabs his bicep to steady herself, her hand lingering there long enough for him to feel the warmth of her palm through his flannel shirt. “I got a rescue beagle last week,” she says, not pulling her hand away, looking up at him with those big brown eyes he remembers from when she was a kid. “Dad left that old heavy-duty K9 crate in my garage, and I can’t get the hinge to stop sticking. You got time to come take a look? I’ll make you those churro pancakes you used to love when you’d come over for Sunday dinner.”
He hesitates for half a second, the old rule-following part of his brain screaming that this is wrong, that people will talk, that he’s too old for this kind of thing. But then he looks at her, at the smudge of peach filling on her left cheek, at the way she’s biting her lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and the guilt fades, replaced by a warm buzz he hasn’t felt since before his wife got sick. It’s a small thrill, breaking a stupid unwritten rule that no one but him even cares about, and he’s tired of denying himself things that make him feel alive.
He nods, picks up her tray of leftover cobbler from the picnic table, and walks with her to her car. When they get there, she leans in a little, close enough that he can feel her breath on his jaw, and wipes the smudge of barbecue sauce he missed off his chin with her thumb. He doesn’t flinch this time. He tells her he’s got a spare jar of the hinge grease he uses for the dog crates on the floor of his truck, and that he’ll stop by her shop first the next morning to pick up a dozen of her churro pancakes before they head to her place. She grins so wide her cheeks dimple, and tucks a crumpled paper with her address and phone number into the front pocket of his flannel, patting it twice before she steps back. He watches her pull out of the parking lot, waving out the window, and takes a sip of his now-warm beer, the crisp October air stinging his cheeks. He shoves his hand in his pocket, fingers brushing the crumpled paper, and smiles for the first time in months without feeling guilty about it.
