Manny Ruiz, 59, retired air show pyrotechnics technician, sat at his usual scuffed Formica table at Mac’s Taphouse the night before Fourth of July, picking at a paper napkin until it frayed at the edges. He’d closed his roadside fireworks stand an hour early, soaked through with sweat from 92 degree heat, his left forearm’s thick, silvery burn scar itching the way it always did when humidity spiked. He’d not missed a Tuesday wing night at Mac’s in eight years, not since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, not even when he’d had a cold bad enough to make his lungs rattle for three weeks straight. Routine was his safety blanket, the thing that kept him from spiraling into the quiet, empty house he’d shared with her for 32 years, the thing that kept him from having to acknowledge how lonely he got some nights, sitting on his back porch watching the stars by himself.
The jukebox blared Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” when she set the platter of hot honey wings down in front of him, her knuckle brushing the back of his hand hard enough to make him jump. He looked up first at her hands: calloused at the fingertips, a smudge of wing sauce on her thumb, a tiny, faded firework tattoo curled around her left wrist, tiny scabs along her index and middle fingers from accidental needle sticks at work. Next he looked at her face: dark hair streaked with gray pulled back in a messy braid, laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, a smattering of freckles across her nose he’d have missed if he hadn’t leaned in a little. She was Mac’s niece, he realized, the travel nurse he’d heard Mac mutter about coming to help out while he recovered from knee replacement surgery, the one who’d spent the last three months working 12-hour shifts in an Idaho hospital’s emergency room through a brutal RSV surge.
“Mac said you take extra ranch,” she said, setting two ramekins down next to the wings, holding his gaze a beat longer than a stranger would, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Said you yell if you don’t get it.” Manny huffed a laugh, rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious about the hole in the elbow of his faded 2017 AirVenture air show hoodie, the gray stubble on his chin he’d forgotten to shave that morning. He’d never been good at talking to women, not even when he was dating Linda, and he’d all but stopped trying after she died. The few women in town who’d tried to ask him out had been met with mumbled excuses, quick exits, the kind of cold shoulder he hated giving but felt he owed to Linda’s memory. That old guilt twisted in his chest for half a second before she nodded at his forearm, the burn scar glowing pink under the bar’s neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign.
“Pyro accident?” she asked, sliding into the booth across from him without asking, setting her iced tea down hard enough to slosh over the edge onto the table. She explained she was Lila, 47, just off that three-month travel nurse stint, where she’d spent half her days patching up kids who’d blown their fingers off with illegal black market fireworks. The tattoo, she said, she’d gotten after a Fourth of July shift two years prior, when she’d delivered a baby in a Walmart parking lot while a local fireworks show went off overhead, the new mom naming the girl Sparky as a joke. Manny found himself talking before he could stop himself, telling her about the 2018 air show mishap that left the scar, how he’d misjudged the timing on a 12-inch shell, how it had gone off ten feet from his face, how Linda had yelled at him for three hours straight in the ER before she’d held his hand and told him she was glad he was alive.
A rowdy group of teen boys burst through the front door yelling about firecrackers they’d stashed in their backpacks, and Lila slid closer to his side of the booth to get out of their way, her shoulder pressing firm against his. He could smell coconut shampoo on her hair, mixed with the lemon in her iced tea and the faint tang of antiseptic she still carried from her shifts. The guilt twisted again, sharper this time, part of him screaming that he was betraying Linda, that he should make an excuse and leave, that he was too old, too set in his ways, too broken to let anyone new in. But the other part of him, the part that hadn’t felt alive in years, hummed, warm and bright, when she laughed so hard at his dumb joke about misfiring shells that had once landed in a small town mayor’s prize rose bush that she snort-laughed into her iced tea.
When she complained the town’s show was always too crowded down at the park, that you couldn’t see half the shells over the crowd of people with lawn chairs and coolers, the words were out of his mouth before he could think twice. “You could come to my place tomorrow night. I live up on the hill above town, best view in the county. No crowds. I got cold beer, and I saved a few of the good homemade shells I light off after the town show ends, the ones I don’t sell at the stand.” He held his breath, waiting for her to laugh, to say no, to make an excuse about having to help her uncle close up the bar. Instead she grinned, tapped the firework tattoo on her wrist, and said she’d be there at 8, and she expected front row seats on the back of his pickup, no cheap flimsy lawn chairs allowed.
He spent the next afternoon cleaning the back of his beat-up 2006 Ford F-150, laying down a thick wool blanket he’d kept in the back of his closet since Linda had knitted it for him for their 25th anniversary, the one he’d not touched since her funeral. He almost folded it back up and put it away three times, telling himself he was being stupid, that she wasn’t going to show up, that he was making a fool of himself, but he left it out every time. He stopped at the grocery store on his way home, buying a six pack of the hard mango cider he’d remembered she liked from the bar, even though he hated the stuff himself.
She showed up ten minutes early, holding a Tupperware of chocolate chip cookies she’d baked that afternoon, wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, her hair loose around her shoulders, no makeup on. They sat side by side on the tailgate, feet dangling, passing a can of cider back and forth, when the first town shell went off, painting the sky deep, fiery red, the low boom rattling in his chest the way it always did, the same vibration he’d chased his whole career.
She reached over halfway through the show, lacing her fingers through his, her calloused palm fitting perfectly against his scarred one. He didn’t pull away. He glanced over at her, the light from the fireworks turning her face soft pink, the tiny firework tattoo on her wrist glowing bright against his skin. The first of his homemade shells went off then, a burst of electric blue and gold that lit up the whole valley, and she leaned her head against his shoulder, warm and steady, as the echo of the blast rolled down the hill.
