Rico Marquez, 62, spent 38 years managing 40 acres of navel orange groves outside Frostproof, Florida, until he retired three months before Hurricane Ian tore through the county. His biggest flaw, the one his late wife used to nag him about until the day she died of pancreatic cancer four years prior, was that he’d rather rot alone in his cinder block house than ask anyone for a favor, even if the power had been out for 12 days and his pantry only held three cans of black beans and a half-eaten jar of pickles. He only showed up to the weekly taco night at Moe’s Roadside because his 72-year-old next door neighbor left a free meal ticket taped to his screen door at 10 a.m., scrawled with a note that said if he didn’t go eat real food she’d come over and spoon feed him herself.
He took the last open stool at the far end of the bar, shoulders hunched, faded Gators work shirt stiff with dried sap from the 17 fallen orange trees he’d cut up the day before, dirt still crusted under the edges of his fingernails even after he scrubbed them for ten minutes with dish soap. The bartender slid a plate of three carnitas tacos across the sticky Formica counter without asking, plus a cold bottle of Modelo, and Rico nodded, too tired to make small talk. The air smelled like grilled pork and lime zest drifting in from the taco truck parked out front, and the jukebox blared Tom Petty deep cuts loud enough to drown out the hum of the portable generators strung along the bar’s exterior.
He was halfway through his second taco when she sat down two stools over, flannel shirt unbuttoned over a white tank top even though the humidity hung thick enough to drink, chipped turquoise ring glinting when she wrapped her hand around the beer the bartender set in front of her. He recognized the thin, silvery scar above her left eyebrow immediately. He’d watched her get that at his wedding 38 years prior, when she’d laughed so hard at his best man’s terrible speech she’d fallen off a folding chair and cracked her head on a metal table leg. She was Elena, his late wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d moved to Oregon right after the wedding and never came back to visit, not even when his wife got sick.
The bowl of extra lime wedges was sitting between his stool and hers, and when she reached for it, the back of her hand brushed his. Her skin was cool, calloused at the knuckles, and he flinched like he’d been burned before he even thought about it. She smiled, slow, and he noticed the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes matched his wife’s exactly. “You’re Rico, right?” she said, voice raspy like she’d spent years yelling over barking dogs, which he later found out she had—she ran a senior dog rescue outside Portland, and was in town for three weeks with a crew of volunteers clearing downed trees and fixing roofs for elderly residents who couldn’t afford to pay for repairs.
His first thought, sharp and guilty, was that he shouldn’t be talking to her. That it was wrong, somehow, to sit across from a woman who shared his wife’s smile, to notice that she smelled like pine soap and coconut sunscreen, to want to lean a little closer when she told him she’d spent the previous day clearing fallen oak branches off the fence line of his old grove. She said she’d found a single hibiscus clipping, still alive, tucked under a pile of branches, the same kind his wife had planted along the entire length of the grove’s perimeter back when they first got married. She pulled it out of her bag, stem wrapped in a damp paper towel, and held it out to him. The leaves were still bright green, a tiny pink bud peeking out at the top, and his throat tightened so much he could barely say thank you.
They stayed until the bar locked up, the crowd thinning out to just the two of them and the bartender wiping down the counter, and when they walked out into the dark parking lot, strung with solar fairy lights that had survived the storm, she leaned against the passenger door of his beat up 2008 Ford F-150 and didn’t make a move to leave. He was holding the hibiscus clipping in one hand, and when he shifted his weight, his shoulder brushed hers. He didn’t pull away. He could feel her breath warm against his jaw when she tilted her chin up, and when he kissed her, slow, no rush, the hibiscus leaves brushed the side of his neck, soft as his wife’s old silk scarves.
She followed him back to his house in her rental car, her senior hound mix with one floppy ear snoring in the back seat, and they planted the hibiscus clipping in his front yard at 2 a.m. by the light of his truck’s headlights. The dog dug the hole for them, paws caked in red Florida clay, and when she wiped a smudge of dirt off his cheek with the pad of her thumb, he curled his free hand around her wrist and held it there, warm and solid, against his skin.
