Manny Rocha, 62, spent 34 years hunched over air traffic control scopes in Miami, his job requiring every choice calibrated down to the half-second, no room for impulse. A near-miss in 1998, when a private pilot ignored his order to climb, left him with a permanent twitch in his left eyebrow and a rule he’d followed every day since: no unplanned decisions, no messy detours, no poking the hornet’s nest of other people’s drama. He’d retired to north Georgia six years prior, fixed vintage outboard motors out of his shed for extra cash, and kept to himself enough that the small lake town’s gossip mill rarely mentioned his name.
The Fourth of July potluck down at the public boat ramp was the only community event he bothered with, mostly because the fire marshal let people set off their own backyard fireworks after the official show, and he got a kick out of watching the college kids blow up watermelons with M-80s. He was leaning against the dented tailgate of his 1998 F150, wiping jet ski grease off his calloused hands with a paper napkin, when she walked up. The air smelled like charcoal smoke, burnt pork ribs, and the sharp fizz of cheap canned beer, cicadas screaming so loud he almost didn’t hear her request for a cold one.
Elara was 58, his ex-girlfriend Linda’s first cousin, in from Asheville to visit family for the holiday. He’d seen her in passing once before, at Linda’s 55th birthday party three years back, before he and Linda split over her refusal to stop inviting her deadbeat son to crash at Manny’s house. He knew talking to her was crossing an unspoken small-town line, knew Linda would spend the next six months complaining to every waitress at the diner that he was a creep who hit on her family, but when she reached for the beer he held out, her forearm brushed his, cold condensation from the can sticking to his sun-warmed skin, and he didn’t step back.
She leaned against the truck next to him, close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and lavender shampoo, silver hoop earrings catching the pink and orange of the setting sun. She didn’t make small talk about the weather or the fireworks, asked straight out about the 1972 Evinrude he’d displayed at the county fair the month prior, said her late husband had left behind a 16-foot Boston Whaler he’d restored himself, and she’d been hunting for that exact motor for six months. He told her he still had it, stored in the back of his shed, and she laughed, said she’d driven up his dirt road two weeks prior to ask about it, but turned around when she saw the “No Trespassing, I Have Dogs And A Shotgun” sign nailed to his gate.
The guilt hit him slow, first as a twist in his gut, then as a sharp, stupid irritation that Linda still had any hold over his choices at all. He’d spent three years avoiding places he knew she’d be, skipping the diner on Saturdays, skipping the Lions Club meetings, just to keep the peace, and for what? She’d started dating the town’s insurance agent six months after they split, brought him to every public event like a trophy. He glanced over at the grill, saw Linda staring daggers at them, and when a drunk guy from the marina stumbled past, knocking Elara a half-step closer to him, he didn’t shift away.
The first firework went off right as a group of kids ran between them, screaming, and Elara stumbled, catching herself with one hand flat on his chest, the other fisting the side of his worn flannel shirt. He caught her by the waist, calloused fingers curling around the soft fabric of her linen sundress, and for 10 full seconds they didn’t look up at the red and blue bursts painting the sky, looked straight at each other, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t run the math on the pros and cons like he’d done every other time a choice popped up in the last 25 years, just leaned in a fraction, said “Come by my place tomorrow at 10. I’ll show you the Evinrude. We’ll drink iced tea. Linda won’t be within 10 miles.”
She grinned, squeezing his bicep once before she pulled her hand back, and said she’d bring a peach pie she’d baked that morning, extra cinnamon, just how she’d heard he liked it. A few minutes later her sister called her over to the blanket where their family was sitting, and she waved over her shoulder as she walked away, not glancing back at Linda once.
Manny stayed through the end of the official fireworks show, nodded at a few of the marina guys who clapped him on the back on their way out, and didn’t so much as glance in Linda’s direction when he walked to his truck. He stopped at the gas station on the way home, bought a pack of lemon drops he kept stashed for when kids came by the shop, a bag of lemons for the iced tea, and a jar of local wildflower honey he’d heard her mention she put in her tea 22 minutes prior. He unlocked his front door at 9:47 p.m., left the porch light on for the first time in three years, and set the jar of honey on the kitchen counter right next to the iced tea pitcher.
