Manny Rios is 62, a retired air traffic controller who traded El Paso’s screeching jet engines for the low rustle of ponderosa pines outside Boulder three years back. His biggest flaw, one he’s carried since his first day directing flights at 22, is that he overcalculates every possible outcome of every small choice, so he almost never makes the one that would make him happy. His wife Carol died eight years prior from a sudden stroke, and he’s spent the time since sticking to rigid routines: 6 a.m. hikes, black coffee no sugar, the annual town fall chili cookoff he never misses, since that’s where he and Carol had their first date in 1987.
The air that Saturday is sharp with wood smoke and roasted chiles, the local bluegrass band plucking a fast rendition of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” loud enough to rattle the plastic tent poles. Manny leans against a sun-warmed hay bale, sipping a cheap lager, when a woman’s scuffed work boot catches his own by accident, making him slosh a drop of beer down his faded flannel sleeve. He looks up, and it’s Lena Marquez, the new town librarian who moved here three months prior, Carol’s second cousin, the woman he’s actively avoided running into since she showed up. She’s 57, wears a worn denim jacket covered in library fundraiser pins, her gray-streaked dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, and she smells like pine soap and cinnamon gum when she leans in close to yell over the music, her left shoulder pressing firm into his bicep for three full beats before she pulls back to smile.
He tenses up immediately, his brain firing off half a dozen warnings: Carol’s family, this is wrong, you don’t deserve to have fun, you’ll mess this up. He mumbles a hello, and she laughs, loud and throaty, like she can hear the panic in his voice. She says she remembers him from Carol’s funeral, that she’d thought then he was the quietest, kindest man she’d ever met, that she’d been wanting to say hi ever since she saw him hiking the trail behind the library last month, his German shepherd trotting two steps ahead of him. He finds himself laughing before he can stop himself, admitting he’d seen her too, had turned around and hiked the other way because he didn’t know what to say.
They wander over to the pie table, their hands brushing when they both reach for the same slice of crumb-topped peach pie, and Manny yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot stove, mumbled apologies spilling out fast. She rolls her eyes, picks up the slice, nods toward the parking lot, saying she’s got plastic forks in her car, no need to be weird about it. He follows her to his beat-up 2004 Ford F150, they sit on the tailgate splitting the pie, the sun dipping low enough to paint the Rocky Mountain peaks pink and orange at the edges. She leans her head on his shoulder for a quick second, then pulls back, cheeks pink, saying she knows this is strange, that she never meant to cross a line, but she’s been lonely too since her ex left her for a yoga instructor two years back, and talking to him feels easier than anything has in months.
Manny sits quiet for a minute, weighing the voice in his head that says he’s betraying Carol against the warm weight of her leg pressed against his, the faint sound of her breathing, the way she’d laughed at his story about accidentally dyeing his hair neon green last year. He realizes he hasn’t felt this light in eight years, that Carol would have laughed herself sick at him overthinking a kiss with a woman she’d always said was the only member of her family who didn’t drive her crazy. He reaches over, brushes a crumb of peach pie off her lower lip, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her mouth for half a second, and she doesn’t pull away, her dark eyes holding his steady, no hesitation. He leans in, kisses her slow, the faint taste of cinnamon and sweet peach on her tongue, the bluegrass band still playing in the distance as a group of kids yell chasing a golden retriever past the truck. When they pull apart, she tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear, and he reaches for her hand, lacing his calloused fingers through hers.
