Rico Marquez, 53, had sawdust under his fingernails and a streak of white latex paint across his left forearm when he slid onto his usual bar stool at El Azteca’s Taco Tuesday. He’d spent the last 12 hours sanding the curved aluminum shell of a 1962 Airstream he was restoring for a couple from Dallas, and the first cold sip of his IPA hit so good he shut his eyes for half a second. The air smelled like fried masa, pickled jalapeños, and the faint cedar smoke drifting from the fire pit out on the patio, and the jukebox was cranked low enough that he could still hear the couple two stools over bickering about their upcoming hike to Enchanted Rock. He’d been coming here every Tuesday for six years, ever since his wife Lena passed, ever since he’d quit his corporate construction job to restore vintage campers full time, and he’d never once run into anyone he knew from before Lena. Not until that night.
The woman slid onto the stool to his left so close her shoulder brushed his bicep, and the scent of jasmine perfume cut through the taco grease sharp enough he blinked. He glanced over, and his chest went tight. Silver hoop earrings caught the neon blue of the Modelo sign behind the bar, dark hair streaked with threads of gray pulled back in a loose braid, and when she smiled, he’d have known that dimple in her left cheek if he’d gone another 30 years without seeing her. Elara Voss. He’d bailed on their state debate championship final senior year to fix his best friend’s totaled F-150, and he hadn’t spoken to her since. She didn’t look away when his eyes locked on hers, just nodded at the half-eaten carnitas taco on his plate. “Still order extra cilantro, I see,” she said, and her voice was lower than he remembered, rough around the edges like she spent half her days yelling over noisy high school auditoriums.
He wiped his palm on the thigh of his grease-stained Carhartts, suddenly hyper-aware of the sawdust in his hair, the fact he hadn’t shaved in three days. He’d spent decades avoiding any mention of his senior year, any invites to reunions, any reminder that he’d let the one person who’d ever thought he was smarter than he was good with a wrench down so bad. He opened his mouth to make some half-assed excuse to leave, to say he had a camper to work on at 5 a.m., but she lifted her left hand to flag the bartender, and he noticed the empty space where a wedding ring used to be, the faint pale tan line wrapping around her finger. She was a debate coach in Portland, she told him when he asked, had just finalized her divorce two months prior, was in town for the 35th reunion that weekend. She’d asked around at the old high school, and the secretary had given her the name of his bar. “I always wondered what happened to you,” she said, and when she reached for the margarita the bartender set down, her knuckles brushed the back of his wrist where it rested on the bar. He felt the rough callus on her middle finger, the kind you get from holding dry erase markers for hours a day, and his skin tingled long after she pulled her hand back.
The conflict hit him hard, sharp as the edge of an 80-grit sanding block. Half of him screamed to leave, to go back to his quiet shop lined with half-restored campers and Lena’s old camping mugs on the shelf, to stop messing with a past he’d buried for a reason. The other half was buzzing, stupid and giddy like he was 17 again, sitting in the back of her mom’s station wagon on the way to debate meets, trying not to stare at the way she bit her lip when she practiced her closing arguments. They talked for two hours, he bought her a second margarita, she stole a bite of his al pastor taco, and every time she leaned in to laugh at one of his dumb jokes about rotten camper floors and entitled Dallas clients, her shoulder pressed into his, her hair brushed his jaw, and he forgot how to breathe for a second. She told him her ex had hated her job, hated that she loved arguing, hated that she’d rather go car camping than go to fancy country club dinner parties, and he thought of Lena, of the way she’d drag him out on month-long camping trips in their beat-up old 1978 Scotty every summer, and he felt an ache in his chest that wasn’t grief, for the first time in years.
The bar started emptying out around 10, the waitstaff stacking chairs on the tables and wiping down the counters, and she turned to him, her knee brushing his under the bar. Her eyes were dark, unblinking, and she leaned in so close her mouth was an inch from his ear, he could feel her warm breath against his neck, the faint taste of lime and tequila on the air between them. “The reunion picnic is tomorrow at the old park by the lake,” she said, her voice low enough only he could hear. “I always wondered what would’ve happened if you’d showed up to state that weekend. If we’d stopped being cowards long enough to admit we liked each other. You could come tomorrow. Find out.”
He hesitated for half a second, thought of the Airstream waiting for him in the shop, thought of the years he’d spent hiding from any kind of change, any kind of risk that might crack the careful, quiet life he’d built for himself after Lena died. He nodded before he could talk himself out of it. She grinned, that same dimple flashing, and slid a napkin with her phone number scrawled on it across the bar, her fingers brushing his again as she let go. She stood up to leave, slung her frayed canvas hiking bag over her shoulder, and paused for half a second to squeeze his shoulder, her palm warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He sat there for another 10 minutes after she left, staring at the napkin, the condensation from his beer can curling the edges of the paper. He pulled out his beat-up old iPhone, typed her number in, and sent her a text that said I’ll bring the extra cilantro.
