Javi Ruiz, 59, retired hotshot crew foreman turned native plant nursery owner, leans against a splintered wooden post at the Coconino County Fair beer tent, cold IPA sweating through the paper coaster in his grip. The sun bleeds gold over the San Francisco Peaks behind him, and the faint, familiar tang of pine and burnt underbrush still clings to the cuffs of his work flannel, leftover from clearing dead ponderosa saplings off his nursery’s north plot that morning. He’s got a crumpled $20 in his pocket for a bag of roasted pecans on his way out, plans to be home before dusk to feed his two cattle dogs and re-pot a batch of milkweed bound for the local elementary school. He’s already half turned to leave when Maeve Carter steps through the crowd, one hand clamped around a crumpled blue ribbon, the other holding a half-melted cherry snow cone.
He freezes. Maeve is his late wife Ellie’s first cousin, 12 years his junior, who moved to town six months prior to take over the elementary school’s art program. He’s spoken to her exactly three times since she arrived: once when she dropped off a casserole the week she moved, once when she came to his nursery to buy wildflower seeds for her classroom, once at the post office when she helped him carry a box of saplings to his truck. Each interaction left him hot under the collar, guilt coiling tight in his chest, because he’d caught himself staring at the freckles across her nose, the way her laugh crinkled the corners of her eyes, and it felt like a betrayal. Ellie had been gone 8 years, but some unspoken rule he’d written for himself said family by marriage was off limits, that any interest in her made him a creep, a bad husband. He’d gone out of his way to avoid her for the last two months, ducking down different aisles at the grocery store, leaving the farmers market an hour early if he saw her truck parked out front.
The tent is packed with families and retired ranchers yelling over the sound of a cover band playing old Toby Keith, and when a teen in a 4-H hat barrels past him, Javi stumbles forward, half his beer sloshing over the rim of the cup and onto the front of Maeve’s linen button-down. He swears under his breath, grabs a handful of napkins off the nearest table, and dabs at the dark wet spot blooming just above her collarbone before he can think better of it. His calloused thumb brushes her skin for half a second, and he can smell lavender shampoo and lemon polish on her, leftover from polishing the wildflower contest trophies earlier that day. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, mumbles an apology, already mentally kicking himself for touching her, for being there, for even looking at her in the first place.
She laughs, swats his hand away gently, and dabs at the spot herself. “Relax, Javi. It’s just beer. I’ve got three kids in my class who spill glue on me every Tuesday. This is nothing.” She nods at the empty spot next to him, leans against the post so her shoulder is pressed lightly against his, close enough he can feel the heat of her arm through his flannel. “You’ve been avoiding me, huh? I stopped by the nursery twice last week to pick up milkweed, you were always ‘out on a delivery’ according to the kid you have working the register.” He can feel his face heat up, stares down at the half-empty beer cup in his hand, nods. He doesn’t lie, never has, not since his hotshot days when lying about conditions could get a man killed. “Felt wrong,” he says, quiet enough only she can hear it over the crowd. “You’re Ellie’s cousin. People talk. Didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
She snorts, takes a bite of her snow cone, cherry syrup dripping down her wrist. “Please. Half the town is still gossiping about how Mabel Henderson ran off with her bingo partner last year. They’d forget about us in a week. And for the record?” She turns to face him, looks him dead in the eye, no smile on her face now. “Ellie called me three days before she died. Told me if I ever ended up out this way, I needed to kick your ass if you were still moping around alone, refusing to let anyone take care of you. She said you were the most stubborn son of a bitch she ever met, and that you’d spend the rest of your life acting like you owed it to her to be miserable if someone didn’t call you out on it.”
Javi blinks. He’d never heard that, never had any idea Ellie had said that. The guilt that’s been sitting heavy in his chest for months feels like it’s melting a little, the tight coil in his gut loosening. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute, just stares at her, at the blue ribbon sticking out of her jeans pocket, the cherry syrup glistening on her wrist. He reaches out, wipes the syrup off her skin with the pad of his thumb, slow, this time he doesn’t pull away fast. She doesn’t flinch.
They walk out of the fairgrounds together, slow, the air smelling like fried dough and cotton candy and pine. When a group of teens on ATVs roar past on the dirt road, she leans into his side, her hand brushing his, and he laces his fingers through hers. His hands are rough, scarred from decades of holding fire axes and shovel handles, hers are soft, smudged with watercolor paint at the fingertips. They don’t talk the whole walk to his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 parked at the edge of the lot. He opens the passenger door for her, and she pauses on the step, tilts her head up, and kisses him soft, tastes like cherry and sugar and something warm he hasn’t felt in 8 years. He doesn’t pull back.
He closes the passenger door after she climbs in, walks around to the driver’s side, turns the key in the ignition. The radio flickers on to a 90s country station, the same one Ellie used to blast when they’d drive up to the mountains to go camping. He glances over at Maeve, who’s rolled the window down, holding her blue ribbon out the window so it flutters in the warm evening wind.
