Manny Ruiz, 57, spends most days hunched over a workbench in his garage outside Asheville, planing bamboo blanks and wrapping silk thread around custom fly rod handles. He’s been a fly rod builder for 32 years, learned the trade from his father-in-law back when he first married Elaina, and he’s got the nicks and permanent resin stains on his knuckles to prove it. Since Elaina died of breast cancer three years prior, he’s avoided every community potluck, fundraiser, and cookoff within a 20 mile radius, stubbornly convinced everyone who recognizes him is just waiting to offer a sad, patronizing smile and a comment about how sorry they are. He only showed up to the fire department chili cookoff that Saturday because his old fishing buddy Duke showed up on his porch at 2 PM with a six pack of Pabst and refused to leave until Manny agreed to come.
He’s standing by a splintered pine picnic table, half-way through a bowl of chili that tastes like someone dumped half a jar of cumin into it, when someone brushes his elbow hard enough to slosh a drop of greasy red sauce onto his work boots. He’s ready to snap at whoever wasn’t looking, until he glances down and meets Lila Marquez’s eyes. She’s Elaina’s cousin’s daughter, 39, just moved back to the area to take a head park ranger job in Pisgah National Forest, and the last time he saw her she was 17, loading up her car for college with a stack of the hand-tied lures he’d made her for graduation. Now she’s got sun-streaked dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a scar slashing across her left eyebrow from a backcountry skiing accident last winter, and she smells like pine sap and citrus lip balm, the same kind Elaina used to wear. Her calloused hand, rough from chopping trail brush and hauling gear, stays on his forearm a beat longer than strictly necessary, like she’s checking he’s real.
They find an empty oak bench tucked off the side of the field, far enough from the crowd that no one’s paying them any mind. Manny tenses when their knees brush under the bench, his first thought sharp and guilty: this is wrong, you’ve known her since she was 12, you used to drive her to softball practice. He shifts a half-inch away, then shifts right back when she teases him about the time she tried to carve her name into an $800 unfinished bamboo rod when she was 13, and he yelled so loud the neighbors called to make sure no one was getting hurt. She leans in when she laughs, her shoulder pressing fully against his flannel shirt, and he can feel the warmth of her through the fabric. She admits she’s stopped by his shop six times in the past two months, but he never answers the door. He doesn’t tell her he ignores all knocks unless he’s expecting a delivery, that most days he doesn’t even turn the ringer on his phone on.
The sun dips below the tree line as they talk, fireflies flickering low over the grass, the sound of the fire department’s raffle announcement fading into background noise. She reaches across the bench to grab his half-drunk bottle of root beer, her fingers brushing his when she passes it back, and he feels a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed Elaina, back when they were both 22. He’s disgusted with himself for half a second, for even noticing how the collar of her ranger uniform is unbuttoned just enough to show a tiny silver bird necklace, for liking the way she looks at him like he’s not just some sad widower who hides in his garage all day. That shame fades fast when she says quiet, so no one passing can hear, that she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, that she used to make up excuses to come over to his and Elaina’s house just to watch him work on rods, because he was the only grown up who ever listened when she ranted about how much she hated high school.
The crowd starts packing up folding tables and loading coolers into pickup trucks when she leans in even closer, her breath warm against his ear, says she doesn’t care what anyone around here thinks, she’s not a kid anymore, and she’s not going to apologize for wanting to spend time with him. He hesitates for a beat, his hands fisted in the fabric of his jeans, then reaches up to brush a stray strand of hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leans into the touch, her eyes closing for half a second, and he admits he’s been fighting the same stupid, guilty pull since he first saw her standing at his shop door three weeks prior, that he’d felt like a pervert for even thinking about her that way.
He offers to walk her to her truck, parked at the edge of the field under a stand of oak trees. She laces her fingers through his when they step off the path, no one’s looking, everyone’s too busy arguing about who won the chili contest. When they get to her beat-up silver Tacoma, she pulls him in for a slow, soft kiss, tastes like chili and cinnamon gum, and he can feel the rough fabric of her uniform patch against his chest. She tells him she’ll be by his shop tomorrow at 10 AM, bringing a jar of the wild blackberry jam she makes every summer, and he nods, too flustered to say much of anything. He stands there for five minutes after she drives off, watching her taillights fade down the dirt road, the ghost of her hand still in his, and for the first time in three years he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty, silent house.
