Manny Ruiz is 62, spent 31 years teaching welding at the local central Texas high school before retiring two years back, still takes odd custom jobs to keep his hands busy and avoid sitting alone in the house his wife left him. His biggest flaw? He’s spent the eight years since Lena passed shutting down every casual advance, convinced letting anyone new in would be a betrayal of the 34 years they built together. He’d driven to the annual county fire department chili cookoff that Saturday just to drop off the cast-iron first place trophy he’d spent three weeks forging, planned to slip out before anyone could corner him into staying for the judging or the awkward small talk he’d spent years dodging.
He was craning his neck to find the fire chief, trophy tucked under one arm, when a shoulder crashed into his side. Cold, sweet sweet tea sloshed over the rim of a plastic cup, soaking the cuff of his gray flannel shirt. He yelped, fumbling the trophy half a foot before he caught it, and looked down to meet the laughing dark eyes of Elara Marquez. He’d known her since she was 14, when she’d started sneaking over to his workshop after school to beg him to teach her how to fix the beat-up 1987 Ford pickup she’d bought with babysitting money. She was 48 now, ran a mobile vet clinic out of a converted van up in rural Oklahoma, was in town for three months helping her aunt—his next door neighbor—recover from a total knee replacement.
“Whoa, easy there, Ruiz,” she said, grabbing his damp wrist with one hand to keep him from swiping at the wet spot, dabbing at the fabric with a crumpled napkin in the other. Her hand was warm through the soaked cotton, calloused at the fingertips from holding syringes and hauling 50-pound bags of dog food for her farm clients. She smelled like cedar shampoo and peppermint lip balm, the same kind she’d worn when she was 16 and had showed up to his workshop crying because her boyfriend had dumped her the night before prom. He froze, his throat going tight, because for the first time he wasn’t looking at the kid who’d stolen root beer out of his workshop fridge. He was looking at a woman with a silver streak cutting through her dark bangs, laugh lines fanning out at the corners of her eyes, the top button of her denim shirt undone to show a tiny silver horseshoe necklace around her throat.
The logical part of his brain screamed that this was wrong, that he’d watched her walk across the high school graduation stage, that her aunt would probably chase him around the neighborhood with a garden hose if she so much as suspected he was looking at her like that. But the part of him that had been dormant for eight years hummed to life, loud enough to drown out the noise of the country cover band playing in the pavilion, the shouts of people arguing over whose chili was spicier. She’d stopped dabbing at his sleeve, was still holding his wrist, her thumb brushing the thin scar he’d gotten from a welding torch back in 2003, the same scar she’d stared at when she was 15 and asked him if it hurt worse than getting a tattoo.
“Y’know,” she said, tilting her head up so she was holding his eye contact, no shyness in it at all, “I asked my aunt last week if you were still moping around that empty house of yours. She said you only leave to go to the hardware store or feed that lazy hound dog of yours.” He huffed, trying to pull his wrist away, but she held on tighter, grinning. “C’mon. I got a spot by the lake a five minute walk from here. Brought a cooler of that root beer you used to hoard. We can skip the chili judging, I already know the chief’s entry is gonna win, he puts Shiner Bock in it every year and bribes the judges with free firewood.”
He almost said no. Almost made up an excuse about needing to get home to let his dog out, about having a weld he needed to finish for a customer first. But then she brushed a stray fleck of welding charcoal off his jaw with her free hand, her thumb grazing his skin for half a second, and the resistance melted right out of him. He nodded, and she whooped, grabbing his free hand to tug him through the crowd, her fingers laced through his like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The dock at the lake was weathered, splintered in spots, the same one they’d sat on when she was 17 and told him she wanted to be a vet when she grew up. They sat side by side, their boots dangling over the edge, passing a cold root beer back and forth, the sun dipping low over the oak trees painting the sky pink and tangerine. She leaned into his shoulder when a cool breeze rolled off the water, and he tensed for half a second, every part of him waiting for the guilt to hit, the sharp stab of betrayal he’d expected every time he’d even thought about being close to someone else. It never came. All he felt was the warmth of her shoulder against his, the soft sound of her laughing when a group of kids raced past on the bank chasing a runaway goose, the cold fizz of the root beer on his tongue.
He slipped his arm around her waist, slow, like he was scared she’d pull away, and she leaned into him harder, resting her head on his shoulder. The first firework went off over the water ten minutes later, bright electric blue, lighting up her face when she looked up at him. She didn’t say anything, just pressed a soft, quick kiss to the corner of his mouth, before turning back to watch the show, her hand resting on his thigh, their fingers laced together again. He just sat there, watching the fireworks burst over the lake in streaks of red and gold, the peppermint of her lip balm still lingering on his skin, his hound dog’s 7 PM feeding time completely forgotten.
