Rudy Gallegos, 62, retired Texas highway patrol crash reconstructionist, showed up to the weekly street taco volunteer shift only because his adult daughter had signed him up as a prank, and he hated being the guy who bails last minute. He’d spent the last eight years avoiding all neighborhood events, turning down pie drops from the church ladies, ducking waves from neighbors on his morning walks, convinced any casual joy that didn’t involve memories of his late wife Linda was a kind of betrayal. That flaw had cost him a handful of old work friendships, but he’d written that off as the price of honoring their 34-year bond.
The other volunteer was the last person he wanted to see: Marisol Cruz, 58, who ran the native plant nursery two blocks from his house. Two years prior, she’d shown up on his porch with an heirloom tomato seedling after a storm tore out Linda’s favorite rose bush, and he’d snapped at her to leave, his throat tight with grief, angry that anyone would dare try to replace what he’d lost. She’d just nodded, turned, and walked away, no argument, no overblown hurt expression he could feel guilty over later. He’d avoided her ever since, taking the long route to the grocery store just to skip past her nursery driveway.
The first hour was silent save for the clatter of aluminum serving trays, the sizzle of carne asada on the grill 10 feet away, the whoop of kids chasing a stray dog down the gravel sidewalk. They stood on opposite ends of the folding table, passing stacks of corn tortillas and tubs of pico de gallo without making eye contact, their shoulders brushing once when they both reached for a stack of paper napkins at the same time. The rough callus on her thumb grazed his knuckle, and he pulled his hand back like he’d touched a hot skillet, his face heating under the brim of his sun-faded patrol cap.
By the time the line died down, the sun was dipping low over the live oaks lining the street, painting the sky a soft bruised pink. Someone handed them each a cold Modelo, and they leaned against the side of the feed store, sipping in silence for five minutes before she huffed a laugh and nodded at the faded crash reconstruction unit patch sewn to the sleeve of his work shirt. “You gonna apologize for snapping at me over that tomato plant, or you gonna keep pretending I don’t exist for another two years?”
He froze, the beer bottle halfway to his mouth, then sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He admitted he’d been an idiot, that he’d spent so long locked up in his grief he’d forgotten how to be nice to anyone who didn’t know Linda. She nodded, said she got it, her husband had died seven years prior from a heart attack, and she’d spent the first two refusing to even go to their favorite fishing spot because it felt like cheating. “Grief’s not a prison sentence, you know,” she said, her elbow brushing his where they leaned against the cinder block wall. “They’d rather we keep living than rot away missing them.”
A group of preteens ran past, one of them slamming into the edge of the table hard enough to knock over a full jar of habanero salsa. It splattered across both their shirts, bright red splotches soaking into the cotton of his Wrangler tee and her linen work shirt, and for a second he stared, then burst out laughing, a loud, rough laugh he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. She laughed too, grabbing a wet wipe from the pack on the table and leaning in to dab at the splotch on his chest, her hand warm through the thin fabric, her face inches from his, the smell of lavender hand lotion mixing with the smoke from the grill and the citrus of the beer in his hand.
He didn’t overthink it. He asked her if she wanted to head to the diner down the street after they cleaned up, for the vanilla milkshakes they used to sell back when he and Linda were first dating. She grinned, wiping a smudge of salsa off his jaw with her thumb, and said she’d been waiting two years for him to stop being such a stubborn jackass.
They folded up the tables together, him carrying the heavy coolers of leftover soda and salsa to the bed of her pickup, their elbows bumping every few steps. When they were done, she popped the back door of her truck and pulled out a potted tomato plant, the same heirloom variety she’d tried to give him two years prior, the leaves dark green and healthy, a tiny green fruit already growing on one of the vines. He took it from her, his fingers brushing hers, the weight of the clay pot warm in his palms. He tucked the plant into the passenger seat of his own truck, already mentally mapping the spot in his backyard where Linda’s rose bush used to grow, where it will get six hours of sun every morning.
