Elio Ruiz, 62, spent 31 years keeping passenger jets from colliding over the Sonoran Desert, retired three years after his wife Carol died of ovarian cancer, hasn’t made a single unplanned choice since. His days run on the same unshakable schedule: 6 a.m. black coffee on the front porch, 8 a.m. tinkering with vintage CB radios in his garage, 2 p.m. walk around the neighborhood park to feed the stray cats, 7 p.m. frozen meatloaf dinner and a black-and-white western on cable. The only deviation is the monthly VFW chili cookoff, the one place he doesn’t feel like he’s treading water waiting for something that’ll never come.
It’s 72 degrees at 4 p.m. on a mid-October Saturday, the air still holding the faint burn of midday desert heat, the VFW parking lot strung with fairy lights that flicker when the dry wind picks up. Elio’s green chile pork took third place that afternoon, the crumpled paper certificate tucked in the pocket of his faded Carhartt jacket, a half-drunk Modelo sweating cold through its label in his hand. He’s leaning against a dented folding table listening to his old air traffic control coworker rant about the local city council cutting the VFW’s operating budget when he feels a sharp, soft nudge to his left bicep.
He turns. Maren Hale is standing there, 58, Carol’s younger cousin, the county librarian who he’s only seen a handful of times since the funeral, always from across a room, always looking away before he can work up the nerve to say hello. She’s holding a stack of neon orange flyers for the library’s senior used book sale, her plaid flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, freckles dotted across her forearms from working in her backyard tomato garden on weekends. Her hair is streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid that’s coming undone at the nape of her neck, and she smells like jasmine hand lotion and the lemon Pledge she uses to dust the library’s old oak checkout desk, a scent that tugs at something he thought he’d buried with Carol.
She apologizes for bumping him, leans in so he can hear her over the Johnny Cash playing on the beat-up portable speaker by the grill, her shoulder brushing his as she gets close enough that he can see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. He’s spent four years telling himself even looking at her is a betrayal, that Carol would hate him for noticing the way her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes, that his friends would whisper if they saw him talking to her alone. The disgust at his own quiet desire sits hot in his throat for half a second before it fizzles out, replaced by a curiosity he hasn’t felt in years.
She asks how his chili turned out, nods when he holds up the third place certificate, laughs when he admits he burned the first batch the night before and had to run to the grocery store at 10 p.m. for more pork shoulder. He finds himself leaning in too, his elbow resting on the table a half inch from hers, not moving when her hand brushes his as she reaches for a napkin off the stack next to his beer. She says she’s been looking for a beat-up copy of *The Old Man and the Sea* to add to the library’s new vintage fiction collection, and he tells her he has the first edition Carol gave him for their 25th anniversary, sitting on his nightstand, still has the crumpled drugstore receipt tucked in the back cover.
He’s fighting the urge to invite her to sit down, to ask her if she wants a bowl of his chili, to stop acting like she’s a ghost he can’t talk to. He keeps replaying the last time Carol mentioned her, six months before she died, saying Maren was too lonely after her divorce, that someone should stop tiptoeing around her and take her out for tacos and a movie. He’d rolled his eyes then, had no idea he’d be the person considering it now, his chest tight with equal parts guilt and excitement.
She reaches across the table to pluck a crumb of honey cornbread off his paper plate, her fingers brushing his knuckles for a full two seconds, cold from carrying the flyers around outside, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, doesn’t apologize for being there, for wanting to be there. He says he’s been avoiding her for four years because he thought it was wrong, that he felt like he was cheating on Carol even thinking about talking to her for more than five minutes. She nods, says she’s been avoiding him too, didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, didn’t want to feel like she was overstepping a line that never even existed in the first place.
He asks her if she wants to get al pastor tacos at the little 24-hour spot down on Speedway after the cookoff wraps up, no pressure, just to talk, maybe he’ll bring the book with him if she wants. She grins, tucks a loose strand of silver hair behind her ear, and slides onto the empty folding chair next to him, her denim-clad thigh brushing his under the table, warm and solid and real. He lifts his beer to take a sip, notices for the first time all day that the fairy lights strung above them aren’t flickering anymore, glowing steady and soft against the darkening indigo of the desert sky.
