Manny Ruiz is 62, spent 38 years as an HVAC foreman in southeast Texas, calloused palms crisscrossed with tiny scars from leaking refrigerant lines and loose sheet metal screws. His wife, Carol, died eight years ago, and he’s spent every day since filling his schedule so full he doesn’t have time to think about the empty side of his bed: fixing widows’ AC units for free, coaching his grandson’s T-ball team, manning the food drive drop-off at the Catholic church every Saturday. His biggest flaw is he can’t say no to anyone but himself. He hasn’t bought himself a new pair of work boots in six years, hasn’t gone on the fishing trip he’s been planning since he retired two years ago, hasn’t so much as had a flirty conversation with a woman that didn’t involve a request to fix something.
It’s 82 degrees at the annual fire department crawfish boil, the air thick with the smell of cayenne, boiled corn, and citronella candles keeping the mosquitos at bay. He’s leaning against the beer cooler, wiping sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his faded gray work shirt, when a woman’s arm brushes his, warm and sun-kissed, as she reaches past him for a cold Shiner Bock. He looks over, and it’s Lila, Carol’s second cousin, the one who moved to Dallas right after he and Carol got married, the one he’d always thought was too sharp, too bright, too much for the small town they’d grown up in. She’s 58 now, streaks of silver in her dark wavy hair, a tiny tattoo of a sunflower peeking out of the neckline of her linen tank top, and she’s grinning like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“Still wearing that ratty Astros cap Carol got you for your 25th, huh?” she says, popping the top off her beer, her thumb brushing the label like she’s tracing a memory. Manny’s throat goes tight. He’d forgotten she was at that anniversary party. He’d also spent 20 years telling himself Lila was off-limits, no exceptions, family even distant family was a line he would never cross. Now she’s standing so close he can smell her coconut sunscreen and the faint vanilla of her perfume, and his brain short circuits for a second.
He mumbles a greeting, steps back a half inch like he’s putting space between himself and a live wire. She laughs, low and warm, and nods at the half-empty tray of crawfish on the table behind him. “You here alone, or you waiting on the grandkids?” she asks. He tells her the kids left an hour ago, his daughter had to get the baby down for a nap. She gestures at an empty picnic table off to the side, shaded by an oak tree, away from the crowd of volunteer firemen yelling about their latest softball win. “C’mon. I just moved back into that old cottage on the lake, I need to pick your brain about the ceiling fan in the screened porch that won’t turn on. My ex would’ve just paid a kid 200 bucks to break it worse, I’d rather hear what a pro thinks.”
He follows her, his boots crunching over discarded peanut shells and crumpled paper napkins. They sit across from each other, and every time one of them shifts, their knees brush under the table. He can feel the heat of her leg through his worn jeans, and he keeps having to remind himself to look her in the eye instead of staring at the way her dimple shows when she laughs at his dumb joke about the time he fixed a church AC unit in the middle of a Sunday service and accidentally blew the hymnals off the pulpit.
She tells him about her divorce, how her ex had been cheating on her with his paralegal for three years before she found out, how she’d sold the house in Dallas, packed up her hound dog, and moved back to the only place she’d ever felt like she belonged. “I always remembered you,” she says, picking a piece of corn off the cob and popping it in her mouth, her eyes not leaving his. “Carol would talk about how you’d get up at 4 a.m. to fix her window unit before work if it broke in the middle of summer, how you’d bring her pecan pralines from the gas station every Friday on your way home. My ex never remembered my birthday without three calendar alerts.”
Manny’s chest feels tight, half guilt, half something he hasn’t felt in so long he can’t name it. He feels like he’s cheating, like Carol is watching him from somewhere, shaking her head. But then Lila leans forward, and wipes a fleck of crawfish fat off his chin with her thumb, her skin soft against his stubble, and she doesn’t pull her hand away for three full seconds. “You’ve been punishing yourself for long enough, Manny,” she says, quiet enough no one else can hear. “Carol would yell at you if she saw you moping around, not letting yourself have any fun. She always told me she wanted you to be happy, even if she wasn’t around.”
The sun dips below the oak trees, and the string lights strung between the pavilion posts flicker on, golden and warm. Most of the crowd has left, only a handful of firemen finishing off the last of the beer left near the cooler. Lila stands, slings her canvas bag over her shoulder, and nods toward the parking lot. “My cottage is 10 minutes from here. I’ve got a bottle of small-batch bourbon in the pantry, and the fan really is broken. You wanna come take a look?”
Manny hesitates for two beats. He thinks about the stack of volunteer sign-up sheets on his kitchen counter, the fishing rod he hasn’t touched in 8 years, the photo of Carol on his nightstand that he still says goodnight to every night. Then he stands, wipes his hands on his jeans, and nods.
They walk to his beat-up 2008 F-150, the gravel crunching under their boots. He opens the passenger door for her, and before she climbs in, she reaches up, brushes a strand of gray hair off his forehead, her palm lingering against his cheek for a second. He gets in the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the radio fades to a slow George Strait song, the same one he and Carol danced to at their wedding. Lila rests her hand on the gear shift, and after a second, Manny covers it with his own, his calloused palm warm against hers, and pulls out of the parking lot, toward the lake.
