Rafe Mendez, 62, spent 38 years as a lineman for a central Texas electric co-op, his hands crisscrossed with scar tissue from frayed wire and storm-felled oak branches, his left knuckle still swollen and ridged from a 2017 repair where he’d been knocked off a pole by a gust of wind during Hurricane Harvey. He’d retired three years after his wife Elaine died of ovarian cancer, moved to the tiny town of Smithville outside Austin, fixed up old F-150s in his garage for extra cash, and avoided any situation that might require him to make small talk with a woman he wasn’t related to. He was gruff, kept his hair cropped close to his scalp, still wore the same steel-toe boots he’d had for 12 years, and told himself he was perfectly happy eating frozen burritos for dinner alone every night.
He was manning the fryer at the VFW’s weekly Friday fish fry when she walked in. Clara Bennett, the new 56-year-old library director the whole town had been gossiping about for the past month—city girl from Chicago, wore linen shirts and had a streak of silver running through her auburn hair, had already gotten into a yelling match with the city council over funding for the summer kids’ reading program. Rafe was supposed to hand her the $1,200 check the VFW had raised for the program, his hands still dusted with cornmeal from breading catfish, when he fumbled the envelope. She reached for it at the same time he did, her soft, paint-stained wrist brushing against his calloused fingers, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire. She held eye contact for a beat longer than was strictly polite, grinning, and said the guys at city hall had told her he was the only person in town who could fix anything that ran on electricity or gasoline. She asked if he’d be willing to take a look at the library’s 1970s record player they wanted to use for senior jazz nights, and before he could talk himself out of it, he said yes.
He spent the next three days overthinking it. Told himself he was an idiot, that he was too old for whatever this was, that the town would talk if he was spotted hanging around the library with the new city girl. He’d spent eight years convincing himself he didn’t deserve anything that didn’t feel like penance for outliving Elaine, that letting anyone new get close was a betrayal. But he couldn’t stop replaying the way her laugh sounded, light and sharp, when he’d apologized for fumbling the check, the way she smelled like lavender and old paper when she’d leaned in to take the envelope from his hand.
He showed up at the library on Tuesday afternoon with his beat-up toolbox, wearing a clean flannel and jeans that didn’t have oil stains on the knees for the first time in months. They spent an hour kneeling on the floor next to the record player, their shoulders pressing together every time she passed him a screwdriver or a piece of electrical tape, and he found himself telling her stories about repairing power lines in the middle of thunderstorms, about how Elaine had hated that he worked such dangerous hours but always left a thermos of coffee on the counter for him before he left for early shifts. She told him she’d moved to Texas after her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old paralegal, that she’d picked Smithville because the library had a wall of windows overlooking the Colorado River and no one there knew her name. When they got the record player working, it blared a Johnny Cash track so loud the kids doing homework in the next room cheered, and she leaned into his side laughing so hard her shoulder shook. She invited him to bring her a plate of catfish at the next fry, said she’d bring the homemade chocolate chip cookies she’d baked for the city council meeting the week before, the ones he’d snuck a look at when he’d dropped off a permit for his new garage.
She showed up at the VFW at 6 PM on Friday, wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Texas Longhorns t-shirt, holding a Tupperware full of cookies. The old guys at the next table gave Rafe raised eyebrows, but he ignored them, handing her a heaping plate of catfish and hushpuppies, extra tartar sauce on the side like she’d asked. They sat on the picnic bench outside after everyone else left, the sun painting the sky pink and orange, crickets chirping in the oak trees lining the parking lot, when she reached over and brushed a crumb of cornmeal off his jaw, her fingers lingering on his skin for two full seconds. He didn’t pull away. He told her he’d been scared to talk to her at first, that he’d thought he was too set in his ways, too broken, to let anyone new in. She said she’d been scared too, that she’d thought everyone in town hated her for fighting the city council, that she’d almost packed her bags and left two weeks before.
He offered to drive her home when the sun dipped below the horizon, and she said yes. He opened the passenger door of his 1998 F-150 for her, and before she climbed in, she leaned up and kissed his cheek, soft and warm, the faint taste of chocolate still on her lips. The radio was playing an old Willie Nelson track when he pulled out of the parking lot, the windows rolled down, the warm Texas air blowing through the cab, mixing the smell of her lavender perfume with the pine scent of the cedar trees lining the road. He turned to glance at her as they crossed the bridge over the Colorado River, and she was already looking at him, grinning, her hand resting on the seat six inches away from his.
