Ron Hargrove, 58, retired woodshop teacher from Seguin High, leans against the rusted steel smoker at the town’s annual July 4th barbecue, sweating through the cuffs of his faded red flannel. He avoided the event for three years running, only showed up because his granddaughter begged him to watch her compete in the cornhole tournament. His boots are caked in dust from the football field parking lot, the cold Shiner Bock in his hand sweating through the paper coozie, the air thick with the smell of hickory smoke, pickled okra, and coconut sunscreen from the teen girls running the snow cone stand. His biggest flaw, one he’s carried since his wife Linda passed seven years prior, is that he refuses to let anyone new get close, writes off any hint of attention as a nuisance, convinced moving on would be a betrayal of the 32 years they had together.
He’s half watching his granddaughter trash talk her middle school friend across the cornhole board when someone bumps his elbow hard enough to slosh beer over the lip of the can onto the toe of his work boot. He glances down first, then up, and recognizes Clara Bennett immediately. 54, ex-wife of his old football coaching buddy Jake, runs the new native plant nursery out on Highway 123, they’ve crossed paths a dozen times over 20 years, but never talked for more than five minutes at faculty potlucks or holiday parades. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Willie Nelson tee with a hole at the hem, and scuffed white work boots, a streak of silver cutting through her sun-bleached brown hair just above her left ear, dirt crusted under the nails of the hand she holds up to apologize. The peppermint from her gum mixes with the citrus of her sunscreen, sharp and sweet, and she laughs so hard her shoulders shake when he jokes that the beer stain was an improvement on the 10-year-old grease mark already on the boot.
They fall into easy conversation, leaning against the smoker, and he finds himself noticing small things he never paid attention to before: the faint scar across her left cheek from a horse riding accident when she was 16, the calluses on her palms from hauling cinder blocks and repotting cacti, the way she tilts her head to the side when she’s listening, like she’s actually interested in what he’s saying instead of just waiting to talk. She teases him for still wearing the same scuffed leather tool belt he wore when he built the sets for the high school production of *Oklahoma* 12 years prior, and he teases her back for still chewing the same spearmint gum that used to make Jake complain her purse smelled like a dentist’s office. Every few minutes someone jostles the crowd around the food table, and their shoulders brush, or their knees knock, and every time it happens a jolt runs up his spine that he hasn’t felt since he was 17 and taking Linda to prom.
The logical part of his brain screams that it’s wrong. Jake was his friend for 22 years, even if they drifted apart after Jake and Clara’s messy divorce four years prior, even if Jake moved to Arizona to remarry and never came back. Even bigger than that, it feels like he’s cheating on Linda, like the ring on his left hand is burning a hole through his finger. He tenses up, goes quiet for a minute, and Clara notices, stepping back a half foot, giving him space, not pushing, just sipping her sweet tea and watching the band start playing a slow, twangy cover of *Always on My Mind*. The sun dips low over the football field bleachers, painting the sky pink and orange, and kids run past screaming, their snow cones dripping blue and red onto the grass.
She mentions she’s been trying to find someone to build six raised cedar planter boxes for the nursery’s native wildflower stand, says she’s had three guys flake on her already, all of them charging twice what the job is worth and acting like they’re doing her a favor. She shifts closer again, so their elbows are touching, and looks up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the sunset, and says she’d pay him in cold beer and as many peach crumb pies as he wants, the same ones she used to bring to the faculty potlucks that everyone fought over. He hesitates, his throat tight, the old guilt roaring loud enough to drown out the band for a second, before he remembers Linda’s last words to him, quiet in the hospital bed, telling him he was too stubborn for his own good, that he didn’t get to spend the rest of his life being lonely just because she wasn’t there anymore.
He smirks, takes a sip of his beer, and tells her he’s free next Saturday, but she’s got to throw in a free succulent for his kitchen window, the kind that can survive if he forgets to water it for two weeks. She laughs, loud and bright, and reaches out to brush a stray crumb of brisket off the front of his flannel, her calloused fingers lingering on his forearm for half a second longer than necessary, warm through the thin fabric.
They stand there for another 20 minutes, swapping stories about old high school pranks, her complaining about the customer who tried to return a cactus because it “bit his dog”, him complaining about his granddaughter begging him to learn TikTok dances. When she says she’s got to head home to feed her three rescue dogs, he walks her to her beat-up 2004 Ford F150, the back filled with half-potted milkweed plants. She leans into the cab for a second, then pulls out a tiny potted zebra haworthia, its thick striped leaves shiny, and hands it to him. He tucks it into the passenger seat of his own truck when he leaves later, sitting right next to the framed photo of Linda he keeps on the dash, the warm buzz of the beer mixing with the faint peppermint of her gum still lingering on his shirt sleeve.
