Elroy Mendez, 62, spent 38 years as an air traffic controller at Dallas-Fort Worth International, talking down jumbo jets through thunderstorms and holiday rush hour without ever raising his voice. His only flaw, as his late wife Maria used to tease him, was that he held onto things too tight: old work boots, chipped coffee mugs, the guilt of even thinking about going on a date eight years after her ovarian cancer diagnosis took her. He’d worn the same thin silver wedding band every day since they’d eloped to Juarez in 1990, turned down every blind date his golf buddies tried to set up, spent most weekends tinkering with his 1987 Ford F-150 or testing chili recipes in the cast iron Dutch oven Maria had given him for their 10th anniversary.
He was leaning against a split-rail fence at the annual Hill Country Chili Cookoff, nursing a lukewarm Shiner Bock and staring at the third-place ribbon pinned to his plaid flannel sleeve, when someone’s shoulder slammed into his back hard enough to slosh half his beer onto the dirt. He turned, ready to snap, and froze. It was Lena Hart, his next-door neighbor’s 58-year-old niece, the botanical illustrator who’d been in town for three months helping her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. She was holding a half-empty frozen margarita, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek, and her brown eyes were wide with apology. Half her drink had spilled onto his sleeve too, the cold lime and tequila seeping through the cotton to his skin.
“Jesus, I am so sorry,” she said, leaning in so close he could smell jasmine perfume and the smoky beef chili she’d sampled ten minutes prior on her breath. She grabbed a crumpled paper napkin from her jeans pocket and dabbed at the wet spot on his arm, her knuckles brushing the coarse hair on his forearm by accident. He held his breath. He’d talked to her a handful of times before, bringing over jars of his homemade dill pickles when she first moved in, waving when she was out pulling weeds in her aunt’s front yard, but he’d never been this close. She didn’t step back when she was done dabbing, just held his eye contact for a beat too long, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smile. “Guess that’s what I get for trying to race the line for cornbread.”
He snorted, the tension in his shoulders melting before he could stop it. “Eh, the margarita stain’s a better decoration than this sad third-place ribbon anyway. Judges don’t know good brisket chili if it smacks ’em in the face.”
That’s when the guilt loosened its grip. He’d spent so long convinced any interest in another woman was a betrayal, that Maria would be angry, but he could almost hear her laughing at him, calling him an idiot for wasting his good years sitting alone in his recliner watching old John Wayne westerns. He twisted the wedding band on his finger, a nervous habit he’d had since Maria died, and for the first time, he slid it off, tucking it into the front pocket of his flannel where it sat warm and heavy next to his folding pocket knife.
The sun was dipping below the oak trees by the time the band finished their set, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine. He asked her if she wanted to get carnitas tacos at the little food truck off Main Street, the one that served homemade horchata with extra cinnamon dusted on top. She grinned, and when she reached over to pass him the cold beer someone had handed her a minute earlier, her fingers brushed his, lingering for two full seconds. “I’d like that a lot,” she said.
They sat on his front porch an hour later, grease dripping from the taco wrappers onto the weathered wooden slats, crickets chirping loud in the live oak tree in his front yard. She asked him if he’d ever been to Yellowstone, said she was going there next spring to paint wild lupines and Indian paintbrush for a new field guide. He told her he and Maria had gone there for their 20th anniversary, that he’d been wanting to go back but never had the nerve to go alone. She asked if he wanted to come with her.
He didn’t even have to think about it. He said yes. He reached for her hand, calloused from decades of twisting radio dials and scraping burnt chili off cast iron, and laced his fingers through hers, the wedding band still warm and heavy in his front pocket.
