Manny Ruiz is 62, a retired high school woodshop teacher who’s lived in the same Arvada, Colorado split-level for 34 years. His biggest flaw, the one his late wife Maria teased him for until her ovarian cancer death three years prior, is that he locks himself into ruts so deep he can’t see over the edges. He hasn’t set foot at a neighborhood block party since her funeral, even when the old ladies down the street dropped off casseroles and handwritten invitations every month. The only reason he’s out now is that a former student stopped by with a custom cedar birdhouse he’d carved for Manny as a gift, and Manny wandered to the fence edge to grab an IPA from the HOA cooler, planning to dart right back inside before anyone tried small talk.
The air smells like charred bratwurst, cut grass, and the sickly sweet tang of neon pink snow cones the neighborhood kids chase each other around with. He’s leaning against the weathered fence picket, twisting the beer can tab back and forth, when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Lena Carter, the 58-year-old mobile pet groomer who moved next door two months prior, is walking toward him holding two paper plates stacked high with elote, corn slathered in crema and dusted with chili powder. She’s in a linen sundress the color of sea glass, flip flops slapping against warm asphalt, and a streak of gray runs through the dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid.
She stops close enough that Manny can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint lime zing of the elote on her fingers when she holds one plate out. “Made a dozen ears for the party, turns out half the block’s on some weird no-carb kick,” she says, grinning, and when their fingers brush as he takes the plate, he flinches like he’s been burned. He hasn’t touched a woman who wasn’t a nurse or grocery store cashier in three years, and the jolt up his arm is equal parts warm and sharp, like he’s doing something he shouldn’t.
He mumbles a thank you, takes a bite of corn, and is already running through excuses to leave—my garage door’s stuck, the birdhouse needs sealing, I left the stove on (even though he hasn’t cooked on the stove in six months)—when she leans against the fence next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and asks about the birdhouse on the post behind him. He tells her about the student who made it, about the 12 years he ran the woodshop’s community project building dog houses for the local animal shelter, and he’s surprised when he doesn’t run out of things to say. She listens, leaning in a little every time he talks, eye contact steady no matter how many times he darts his eyes away at first, and she laughs so hard at the story about the student who glued his hand to a table saw that she snorts, wiping at the corner of her eye with the back of her hand.
The guilt creeps in slow, heavy in his chest. He’d promised himself he’d never even look at another woman after Maria died, that he’d spend the rest of his life tending to her rose garden and building birdhouses and nothing else. But Lena smells good, she thinks his dumb woodshop stories are funny, and when she gestures at a golden retriever trotting past, her forearm brushes his again, and this time he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t pull away, either.
He’s just about to blurt out the birdhouse excuse when she turns to him, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and asks if he’d be willing to help her build a raised feeding station for her oldest golden, who has bad arthritis and can’t bend down to eat off the floor. “I’ll buy all the lumber, bring the beer, even bring the dogs over to keep you company if you want,” she says, the offer so casual and kind that the guilt fades a little, replaced by a warm flutter in his stomach he hasn’t felt since he was 19 taking Maria to her first high school dance.
He hesitates for three full seconds, his thumb rubbing the dent in the side of his beer can, before he nods. “Yeah, that works. My garage is open Saturday around 10.”
She grins, gives his arm a light, quick squeeze, and tells him she’ll be there before turning to walk back to the group of neighbors calling her name. He watches her go, the sundress swishing around her calves as she laughs and waves at a kid holding a snow cone, and he doesn’t make a move to go inside. He finishes the elote, finishes the beer, leans against the fence and watches the sun dip below the Rocky Mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender. The rose bushes Maria planted along the fence are blooming, their sweet scent mixing with the smell of the last brats on the grill, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel a sharp twist of guilt when he thinks about the weekend ahead. He leans down, picks up the cedar birdhouse from the fence post, and carries it inside to grab the sealant he’d bought last week, already mentally measuring the length of lumber they’d need for the feeding station.
