Manny Ruiz is 67, a retired cattle auctioneer who called bids across the Texas Panhandle for 38 years before hanging up his gavel three years back. He’s got a scar slashing across his left cheek from a 1994 bull riding accident, a permanent limp in his right leg, and a stubborn streak a mile wide—he’s refused every blind date his sister has set him up on since his wife, Elaina, died of breast cancer 12 years prior, mocking his friends who drag themselves to senior mixers at the community center like lost puppies looking for a meal. He spends most weekends at the Hill Country beer garden on the edge of town, hauling kegs for the owner for free in exchange for all the Shiner Bock he can drink and a front row spot for the weekend cover bands.
It’s the annual May crawfish boil, the air thick with the smell of Old Bay, beer, and cut grass, when he bends down to grab a dropped tray of crawfish for an 82-year-old regular he’s known since high school, and his shoulder slams straight into someone’s side. Iced tea sloshes over the rim of a plastic cup, soaking a dark splotch into the front of his faded red flannel, the one already spotted with barbecue sauce and cow manure from mucking out his neighbor’s horse stall the day before.
He’s halfway to grumbling an apology when he looks up. It’s Clara Bennett, the 52-year-old part-time librarian who moved to town three months prior, the one he’d seen browsing the feed store two weeks back wearing a linen sundress and boots, who’d waved at him like they were old friends even though they’d never spoken. She’s holding a crumpled paper napkin, leaning in before he can protest, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt, her knuckle brushing the coarse hair on his chest for half a second that feels like an hour. He can smell coconut sunscreen on her skin, mint gum on her breath, and she’s holding eye contact like she’s not in a hurry to look away, laughing when he mumbles that the shirt was already garbage anyway.
All the picnic tables are full, so she asks if she can sit across from him. He nods, gruff, like he’s doing her a favor instead of fighting the stupid flutter in his chest he hasn’t felt since Elaina was alive. She tells him she found old recordings of his auction calls on the local historical society’s YouTube channel, says the fast, lilted cadence sounds like cowboy poetry. He snorts, teases her for being a book nerd who gets her kicks listening to guys yell out bid numbers. She leans across the table when she talks, her knee brushing his under the bench, the heat of it seeping through his worn denim jeans, and he has to fight the urge to reach out and cover her hand where it’s resting on the wood.
Part of him hates it. Hates that he’s even noticing how her eyes crinkle when she laughs, how she tucks a stray piece of brown hair behind her ear when she’s listening to him talk about running auctions in rain-soaked sale barns when he was 22. He feels like he’s betraying Elaina, like he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life sitting alone on his porch drinking beer and pretending he’s not lonely.
The band switches to a slow George Strait cover, the kind Elaina used to make him dance to in the kitchen after dinner. Clara tilts her head, asks him to dance. He says his knee is too bad, he can’t move right. She says they don’t have to move, just sway, stands up and holds her hand out like she knows he’s not gonna say no.
He isn’t. He stands, limps a little to the small patch of grass people are using as a dance floor, lets her wrap one hand around his upper arm, the other resting in his calloused palm. She’s short enough that her forehead brushes his shoulder when they sway, her breath warm against his neck, and he admits he hasn’t danced since his 25th wedding anniversary. She hums, soft against his shirt, says that’s a damn shame, he’s better at it than he thinks. The guilt unravels then, slow, like a frayed rope. He knows Elaina would have yelled at him for moping around for 12 years, for wasting the good days he still had left.
When the song ends, they walk over to the food line together, and she grabs a butter-soaked corn cob, holds it out to him to take the first bite. He does, butter dripping down his chin, and she wipes it off with her thumb, leaving her hand resting on his jaw for a beat longer than necessary. He asks her if she wants to come out to his old auction barn the next day, says he’s got a collection of vintage auctioneer microphones he restores as a hobby, that he can even teach her how to do a basic call if she wants. She grins, says she’d like that, a lot.
He tucks a stray piece of her windblown hair behind her ear, and for the first time in over a decade, he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for something to end.
