Manny Rios is 62, retired high school wrestling coach, spent 31 years yelling takedown cues at sweaty teens in singlets, still runs a free summer clinic for low-income kids in his small Ohio town. His only flaw, if you ask his sister, is that he’s clung to a stupid, self-imposed rule for eight years: no dating, no flirting, no so much as holding eye contact longer than three seconds with any woman who isn’t related to him. He made the rule the week his wife Diane died, convinced any interest in someone else would be a betrayal of the 34 years they spent building a life, fixing up their old ranch house, sitting through every terrible high school play and wrestling tournament the county had to offer.
He’s manning the fryer at the annual community fish fry, grease popping and stinging his bare forearms, when it happens. The air is thick with the smell of fried catfish, cut fescue, and cheap cherry Kool-Aid, kids screaming as they chase each other with water guns across the grass lot next to the community center. She steps up to the food table to grab a container of coleslaw, and her elbow brushes his forearm when she reaches for a plastic fork. He smells lavender lotion, sharp and sweet over the grease, and glances down. It’s Clara Bennett, the new town librarian, the one he’d heard gossip about for months, 58, moved to town in March after leaving a 30-year marriage to a lawyer who’d cheated on her with his paralegal.
She holds his gaze a beat longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up. “You gonna flip that fillet before it turns to charcoal, coach, or you charging extra for the char?” She nods at the catfish he’d been letting sizzle too long, distracted. He fumbles the metal spatula, flips the fillet fast, and a fleck of hot grease hits his cheek. He curses under his breath, and she laughs, a low, throaty sound that makes the back of his neck warm. He’s instantly mad at himself for noticing, for the flutter in his chest he hasn’t felt since he was 19 and asked Diane to prom. This is exactly the kind of thing he’s spent eight years avoiding. He mutters a thanks, turns back to the fryer, and tries to ignore her standing three inches away, sorting through napkins.
All the picnic tables are full when he grabs a paper plate of fish and a root beer, so he ends up sitting across from her at the only empty spot left, the edge of their knees brushing under the table. She mentions she stopped by his wrestling clinic last week, sat in the back bleachers for an hour, watched a 10-year-old kid with a limp nail his first double leg takedown. “I cheered so loud I lost my voice for two days,” she says, grinning, and he freezes. That’s exactly what Diane used to do, yell so loud at matches her throat would be raw the next morning, even when the kids were just scrimmaging. The guilt he’s carried like a brick in his chest for eight years feels a little lighter, for half a second, before he shoves the feeling down. It’s wrong, he tells himself, he doesn’t get to have this.
The sky opens up ten minutes later, fat raindrops pouring down so fast everyone is screaming and running for cover. He grabs her wrist without thinking, yanks her under the metal awning of the community center, their sides pressed tight together as rain drums so loud on the roof they can barely hear each other. Her hair is stuck to her forehead, a smudge of blue ink on her wrist from stamping library books, and she looks up at him, her brown eyes soft. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out for coffee for three weeks,” she says, so quiet he almost misses it over the rain. “I didn’t want to overstep, I know you lost your wife.”
He’s quiet for 10 seconds, his heart hammering so hard he can feel it in his ears. For eight years he’s thought the only way to honor Diane was to shut the rest of the world out, but he remembers the last thing she told him, holding his hand in the hospital bed: don’t you dare spend the rest of your life being lonely for me. He realizes he’s been disgusted with himself for even wanting to talk to Clara, for wanting to laugh at her jokes, but that disgust was never for her, it was for the part of him that thought he didn’t deserve to be happy again.
“I’m free Wednesday morning,” he says, and her face lights up. “The diner on Main has pecan pie so good it’ll make you forget every bad thing that ever happened to you.” She laughs, squeezes his hand, and he realizes he’s still holding it, his calloused palm wrapped around hers, the rain still pouring down around them. When the rain lets up ten minutes later, he doesn’t let go of her hand when they walk back to his beat-up Ford pickup to grab an extra towel for her soaked shoulders.
