Manny Ruiz is 62, spent 38 years managing 120 acres of satsuma groves outside Lakeland before he sold most of the land to a conservation group two years back. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent every day since his wife Elaina died in 2021 pretending he likes being alone, turning down every invite to fish fries, poker games, even the annual grove growers’ banquet, because he thinks letting anyone new in would be a betrayal of the 34 years he had with her. He only showed up to this fire department fundraiser because his next door neighbor practically banged his front door down at 4 PM saying the department was short on donations and he owed them for putting out the brush fire on his remaining 10 acres last spring.
He’s lined up at the rolling cooler grabbing a cold Bud Light when a woman’s hand brushes his, fingers calloused and cool from holding a paper plate stacked with fried catfish and coleslaw. He yanks his hand back like he touched a hot fence post, then looks up and recognizes Lena Carter, Elaina’s second cousin, 14 years younger than him, just moved back to town last month after her divorce from a real estate agent in Tampa. She’s got sun freckles across her nose, silver hoops glinting in the golden hour light, and she’s holding his gaze longer than any relative has a right to, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knows exactly how flustered he is. She smells like coconut sunscreen and fried hushpuppies, and he can feel the heat off her arm even though she’s standing six inches away, not close enough to be rude, not far enough to be casual.
He mumbles a hello, grabs his beer, and starts to turn toward the empty picnic table on the edge of the crowd, but she follows him, setting her plate down across from him without asking. He tenses up immediately, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that Elaina would roll in her grave if she saw him sitting alone with her cousin at a public event, the other half buzzing with the quiet thrill that he hasn’t talked to anyone who didn’t work at the feed store in three months, that the sound of her laugh when he trips over the bench leg is the first thing that’s made him smile in weeks. She teases him about the red clay still caked in the treads of his work boots, says she saw him out in the grove last week pruning branches at 7 AM, even though he swears he locks the front gate every night. He admits he leaves the side gate unlatched on purpose, because he noticed her beat up Honda Civic parked out by the road a handful of times, saw her picking up fallen satsumas to use for pottery glazes.
The country cover band behind them switches to a slow 90s track, the kind he and Elaina used to dance to in the kitchen after dinner, and Lena leans forward across the table, her knee brushing his under the wood. He doesn’t move his leg. She tells him she’s been scared to knock on his door, that everyone in town says he’s a hermit who hates visitors, that she didn’t want to overstep. He tells her he’s been scared to invite her in, that he spent so long convincing himself he had to be miserable to honor Elaina that he forgot what it felt like to look forward to something. A gnat buzzes near his face, and she reaches over to swat it away, her thumb brushing the stubble on his jaw for half a second. The contact sends a jolt up his spine, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away, doesn’t make a dumb joke to brush it off like he would have six months ago.
The sun dips lower, painting the sky pink and orange over the oak trees lining the park, and the crowd starts to thin out, people packing up coolers and herding cranky kids to their minivans. He finishes his beer, crumples the can in his hand, and asks her if she wants to come back to the grove to watch the rest of the sunset, says he’s got a cooler of cold sweet tea on his back porch and a jar of pickled okra his sister made last week. She grins, stands up, and slings her canvas tote bag over her shoulder, says she’d love that, as long as he promises to let her take a few extra satsumas home for her next glaze batch.
He walks her to his beat up 2008 Ford F150, holds the passenger door open for her, and when she climbs in, her hand brushes his again, deliberate this time, warm and steady.
