Rico Morales, 62, retired citrus grove irrigation specialist, had only dragged himself to the annual Polk County Citrus Blossom Festival because his 10-year-old granddaughter had begged him to enter his sour orange marmalade in the home goods contest. He’d taken third, accepted the cheap plastic plaque with a mumbled thanks, and bolted for the volunteer fire department’s beer tent before anyone could corner him into small talk. The air hung thick and sweet, heavy with the heady perfume of orange blossoms and the greasy tang of fried alligator bites from the food truck two stalls over. He leaned against a wobbly plastic picnic table, popped the tab on a cold IPA, and figured he’d wait 20 minutes before slipping out to his beat-up Ford F-150 and heading back to his quiet grove on the edge of town.
He didn’t notice when she slid onto the bench across from him until she set a can of lime seltzer down hard enough to make his beer slosh over the edge of the cup. Clara Carter, 58, part-time library circulation clerk and widow of his 20-year professional rival Jake, tilted her head and smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling at the edges. “I voted for your marmalade, for the record. Judges picked the one with extra honey as first place, but yours had the right bite. Tasted like actual Florida oranges, not candy.” Rico froze. He’d spoken to Clara maybe three times total in all the years he and Jake had screamed at each other over irrigation permits and water rights, each convinced the other was wasting the county’s most precious resource. He’d always thought she was far too nice for a guy as stubborn and loud as Jake, but he’d never dared say it out loud.
She shifted closer, the edge of her denim jacket brushing his forearm when she reached for a napkin to wipe up the beer he’d spilled. Her shoulder was barely three inches from his now, and he could smell jasmine lotion mixed with the orange blossom hanging in the air, a scent that made his chest feel tight in a way he hadn’t felt since his wife Elena had passed four years prior. He’d sworn off dating, sworn off even casual conversations with women that lasted longer than ordering coffee, convinced any kind of connection would be a betrayal of the 32 years he’d had with Elena. But he couldn’t look away from Clara’s eyes, deep brown with streaks of amber, holding his gaze long enough to make the tips of his ears go pink.
“Jake was an idiot about you, you know,” she said, swirling the ice in her seltzer can so it clinked loud enough to cut through the 80s country cover band playing at the main stage. “He’d come home ranting about how you were wasting water, but I drove past your grove every day on my way to the library. Your trees were always the greenest, the fullest. Yours bore fruit two weeks earlier than everyone else’s during that drought in 2018. I told him he was just mad you were better at your job than he was.” Rico huffed a laugh, surprised. He’d spent 20 years thinking the entire Carter family hated his guts. When she brushed a stray orange petal off the collar of his faded flannel shirt, her fingers grazed his collarbone, and he flinched like he’d been burned, but didn’t pull away.
The voice in the back of his head screamed that this was wrong, that you didn’t flirt with a guy’s widow less than a year after he dropped dead of a heart attack on his tractor, that he was being disrespectful to both Jake and Elena. But the louder part of him, the part that had eaten dinner alone every night for four years, the part that had stopped going on fishing trips with his buddies because he was sick of them asking when he’d “get back out there,” wanted to lean in, wanted to hear her laugh, wanted to stop feeling like he was just marking time until he could see Elena again. Her knee brushed his under the table when she shifted to face him fully, and he felt heat crawl up his neck.
She nodded toward the row of orange groves at the edge of the fairgrounds, the blossoms so thick the branches looked dusted with snow. “Wanna walk? The fireflies come out around sunset, and the blossoms smell even better back there. No crowds, no judges, no dumb festival games.” Rico hesitated for half a second, then nodded, pushing himself up from the bench. His boots crunched on discarded cotton candy sticks and festival flyers as they walked, and when they stepped over a half-buried irrigation pipe halfway into the grove, she laced her fingers through his, her palm soft but calloused at the fingertips from decades of turning library book pages. He didn’t pull away.
He told her about Elena, about how she’d taught him to make marmalade the first year they were married, how he still made a batch every Sunday even though he barely ate half of it. She told him about Jake’s last few months, how he’d been in so much pain he could barely get out of bed, how she’d felt guilty for being relieved when he was gone, like she could breathe again for the first time in years. The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange, and fireflies flickered between the tree branches, blossoms drifting down around them like soft rain.
She leaned in first, kissing him slow, her lips tasting like lime seltzer and peppermint lip balm. He kissed her back, one hand resting lightly on her waist, not caring if any of the festival stragglers wandered into the grove and saw them, not caring about the 20 years of grudges he’d held against Jake, not caring about the promises he’d made to himself after Elena died. The grief didn’t go away, not entirely, but it didn’t feel like it was swallowing him whole for the first time in years. He tucked a loose strand of gray-streaked dark hair behind her ear, and for the first time in four years, he doesn’t feel like he’s just waiting for the days to pass.
