He recognized Lena immediately. She was 49, the widow of his former Army National Guard buddy Jake, who’d passed from a sudden heart attack 18 months earlier. Manny had been the one who’d helped her sort through Jake’s messy estate paperwork, walking her through the military benefits and the small construction company Jake had run, never expecting to talk to her beyond that formal, stressful period. She’d moved back to the area six months prior, opened a small native plant nursery on the edge of town, and Manny had seen her at a handful of community events, always waving from a distance, never working up the nerve to say hello.
She slid a frozen margarita onto the table next to his draft beer, her elbow brushing his forearm when she set it down, and he tensed up, immediately scolding himself for noticing the warmth of her skin through his faded fishing shirt. The scent of coconut sunscreen and jasmine hand lotion drifted off her, sharp enough to cut through the smoky beer and fried food smell of the post, and he realized she’d leaned in closer than strictly necessary when she asked if he was saving the seat for anyone. He shook his head, fumbling for a second before he remembered to respond out loud, kicking himself for acting like a nervous teenager instead of a grown man who’d testified in front of grand juries.
They made small talk at first, about the shrimp festival parade, about the way the local high school football team was shaping up for the fall, about the plague of iguanas that kept digging up her nursery’s seed beds. Manny kept waiting for the lull in conversation that would make her stand up and leave, but it never came. She leaned in every time he spoke, no polite half-smile, no glancing at her phone over his shoulder, her knee brushing his under the table every time she shifted to adjust her position. When he made a dumb joke about how 90% of embezzlement cases get cracked because people buy stupidly expensive jet skis and forget to hide the receipts, she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, wiping at the corner of her eye with the back of her hand, and Manny’s chest felt tight, half guilt, half something softer he hadn’t felt in years.
The guilt was loud, at first. He’d known Jake for 22 years, they’d deployed to Afghanistan together, fished the Everglades together on every long weekend they could get. Hitting on his widow felt like a betrayal, like crossing a line he’d spent his whole life respecting. But every time he tried to pull back, to remind himself he shouldn’t be enjoying this, she’d say something that pulled him right back in, mentioning a dumb inside joke she’d heard Jake tell about Manny’s obsession with perfectly balanced spreadsheets, or asking him if he still had the old flats skiff he’d built with Jake back in 2016.
On the small patch of linoleum they used as a dance floor, they stood close enough that Manny could see the faint flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the small scar on her left cheekbone from a dirt bike crash when she was a kid. His hand rested light on her waist, hers on his shoulder, and when she stepped a little closer, her chest brushing his, he didn’t pull away. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for three months,” she said, her voice low enough only he could hear it, no hesitation, no shy look away. “I thought you were too wrapped up in your audit papers to notice I existed.”
Manny’s overthinking brain short-circuited, all the arguments about respect and lines and guilt vanishing for the first time in longer than he could remember. “I noticed,” he said, quiet, honest. “I just thought I didn’t get to have this. Not with you.” She smiled, and he could feel her breath warm on his jaw when she leaned in a fraction more, the edge of her hair brushing his neck. “Jake would’ve teased you for six months straight for being an idiot about it,” she said, and Manny laughed, the tight knot in his chest unraveling all at once.
They danced through two more slow songs, ignoring the catcalls from a handful of older guys at the bar who knew both of them. When she left an hour later, she scribbled her cell number on a crumpled nursery receipt, the logo for her plant shop printed on the back, and slid it across the table to him. “I’ve got a new fire pit in my backyard, and a cooler of cold sauvignon blanc,” she said, pausing to kiss his cheek, her lips soft against his stubble. “Tomorrow night at 7. Bring that smoked fish dip Jake always said you made better than anyone else on the coast.”
Manny drove home with the receipt tucked in the pocket of his jeans, the stack of unprocessed bait shop audit receipts he’d brought home to work on that weekend sitting forgotten on the passenger seat. He texted her back 10 minutes after he walked in the door, saying he’d bring two containers of dip, just in case. He tacks the nursery receipt to his fridge next to the faded polaroid of him and Jake holding a 30-pound redfish they’d caught on a trip out to the Ten Thousand Islands in 2017.
