Raymundo “Ray” Garcia, 53, retired Border Patrol K9 handler turned custom leather goods maker, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table at the town fire department’s annual cookout, half-empty Modelo in one calloused hand. He’d only shown up to drop off the raffle prize he’d donated: a hand-tooled leather dog collar, leash, and treat pouch set, stitched with the fire department’s logo. He hated small talk, hated the way neighbors kept clapping him on the back and asking when he’d “finally put that pretty leather work to use on a ring for someone.” He’d been single eight years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 32-year-old park ranger, and he’d long since written off romance as a young man’s game, a distraction from the rigid, quiet routine he’d built for himself: wake at 5, walk his two senior German shepherds, open his shop by 7, eat frozen burritos for dinner alone, be in bed by 9. His worst flaw, he’d admit if pressed, was that he’d stopped letting anything unexpected interrupt that routine, even when the loneliness gnawed at him late at night.
The mesquite smoke from the grill stung his eyes, and he was just about to toss his empty beer can in the trash and leave when a woman in a flowy linen sun dress tripped over a kid’s stray skateboard three feet away, fumbling for purchase and grabbing his forearm to steady herself. Her palm was cool even through the thin cotton of his work shirt, her nails chipped mint green, and she smelled like lavender and lemon Pledge, the kind of smell you’d expect from someone who spent all day around old books. “Sorry, oh my god, I’m so clumsy,” she said, laughing, and when she looked up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold held his gaze a full two beats longer than polite. He recognized her: Elara Voss, the new town librarian who’d moved from Portland three months prior, the one all the old guys at the diner had been gossiping about for weeks.
She’d won his raffle prize, she explained, holding up the leather set, but she didn’t have a dog. She’d been meaning to track down the maker anyway, she said, because she’d heard he did custom book bindings too, and she was trying to restore a set of 1950s western novels for the library’s local history section. Ray froze. His father, a small-time western writer who’d never sold more than a thousand copies of any of his books, had written three of the novels she was looking for. He had first editions of all of them, tucked away in a box in his guest room, but he hadn’t pulled them out since his dad died five years prior. His first instinct was to make an excuse, say he didn’t have time, say he didn’t do custom work outside of dog gear, say anything to get back to his safe routine. But then she leaned in a little closer, the shoulder of her dress brushing his bicep, and asked if he’d ever read *Riders of the Red Desert*, his dad’s most obscure book, and he couldn’t lie.
He told her about the first editions, and she lit up, so bright he had to look away for a second, embarrassed by the flutter in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager. He’d spent years telling himself he was too gruff, too stuck in his ways, too boring for anyone who didn’t care about dog training or leather stitching, but here she was, asking him questions about his dad’s books, laughing at his dumb joke about how his dad had written most of the novels while hiding from Ray’s mom in the garage. She asked if he wanted to get tacos from the truck down by the library after the cookout, and he almost said no, almost made up an excuse about needing to let his dogs out, but then her knee bumped his under the picnic table when she shifted her weight, and neither of them moved away, and he said yes before he could overthink it.
They sat on the curb outside the taco truck for an hour, eating al pastor tacos drizzled with lime, watching the desert sky turn soft pink and orange as the sun set. She told him about growing up in Oregon, about how she’d moved to Arizona to get away from the rain, about how she was planning a “Paws for Pages” event at the library where kids could read to trained therapy dogs, and he offered to bring his two shepherds, both gentle as kittens with kids, without even hesitating. When she licked a streak of taco sauce off her thumb, he couldn’t look away, and she caught him staring, smirking, not even pretending to be embarrassed.
He walked her to her beat-up Subaru a few minutes later, crickets chirping loud in the sagebrush lining the parking lot. She handed him her phone to type in his number, and their fingers brushed when he passed it back, a little spark that made his skin tingle. She leaned in, pressed a soft, quick kiss to his stubbled cheek, and he could still smell the lavender and lime on her when she pulled away. “Text me the address of your shop, yeah? I’ll stop by next week to talk about the book bindings,” she said, grinning, before she got in her car and drove off.
Ray stood there for a full minute, touching the spot on his cheek where her lips had been, before he pulled out his own phone. He typed out a text with his home address, told her he could leave the first edition of his dad’s book on his porch tomorrow if she wanted to swing by, no pressure. He turned toward his own truck, already mentally rearranging his morning routine to stop at the diner on the way home, to pick up a dozen lemon poppyseed muffins, the kind she’d mentioned offhand were her favorite three tacos prior.
