Aris Mendez, 62, retired air traffic controller with 31 years of keeping planes from slamming into each other over DFW International, sat in his usual scuffed vinyl booth at Fort Worth VFW Post 112, picking crumbs of hushpuppy off the grease-stained paper plate. He’d had the same order every Friday for four years, ever since his wife Elena died of breast cancer: two pieces of fried catfish, coleslaw no dressing, a single Miller Lite, no conversation longer than five minutes with the guys who wandered over to talk about old deployments or pickup truck transmission issues. His plan for the rest of the night was set in stone, same as every other night: drive home at 7:30 sharp, work on the 1/48 scale B-52 model he’d been painstakingly gluing together for three months, be in bed by 10. No surprises, no variables, no chance he’d mess something up the way he’d spent three decades terrified he would, his career training bleeding into every corner of his personal life.
The bell above the front door jingled at 7:12, and he looked up without thinking, his air traffic controller brain automatically logging every new entry to the space. It was Lila. Elena’s younger cousin, the one who’d shown up to their 1994 wedding barefoot with a tattoo of a sunflower wrapping around her left wrist, the one who’d call once every two years from a road trip in Costa Rica or a waitressing gig in a small Alaskan fishing town, the one Elena used to tease for “living like she had a net no one else could see.” He hadn’t seen her since Elena’s funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight his ribs ached, then vanished before the repast was over, leaving only a jar of her famous homemade salsa on his porch the next morning. She spotted him immediately, waved, and walked over before he could pretend he was busy wiping beer off his jeans, sliding into the booth across from him without asking.
She smelled like coconut shampoo and lime, her dark hair streaked with a single strip of silver at the temple, worn in a thick braid thrown over one shoulder. She ordered a frozen margarita from the passing server, then leaned forward, elbows on the table, so close he could see the faint freckles across her nose that he’d forgotten she had. The jukebox in the corner hummed a slow George Strait track, and the table wobbled a little when she rested her weight on it, her knee brushing his under the vinyl edge hard enough that he jolted, fumbling his beer bottle so bad a little sloshed over the rim onto his work boot. “Heard you’re the only guy within 20 miles who can fix a leaky faucet without charging 200 bucks for a 10-minute job,” she said, grinning, and he could feel his face heating up like he was 16 again, talking to a girl for the first time.
He’d spent four years actively avoiding any situation that could even hint at romance, convinced that so much as looking at another woman was a betrayal of the 28 years he’d had with Elena. Lila was family, for Christ’s sake, the kid who used to crash their couch when she was 19 and running from a bad boyfriend, who’d helped Elena plant the rose bushes out front of their house that he still watered every Sunday. He should say no, tell her he was busy, go home to his model plane and his quiet, predictable house. But she was talking about the old lake cabin Elena had left to her in the will, the one Aris had helped renovate back in 2001, the one they’d spent every Fourth of July at for 15 years, lighting cheap fireworks and eating grilled corn until their fingers were covered in butter, and he couldn’t make the word “no” come out of his mouth. He agreed to drive out the next morning at 10.
The faucet took 12 minutes to fix, a loose washer that had been leaking for weeks, dripping onto the tile under the sink until it had left a faint brown stain. Lila brought him a glass of sweet iced tea when he was done, heavy on the lemon, and they stood on the back porch of the cabin, watching the sun dip low over the water, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine. The pine trees around the property smelled sharp and fresh, and the water lapped soft against the dock below them. She leaned into his side, her shoulder pressing into his bicep, and he froze for half a second, every alarm in his risk-averse brain blaring that this was wrong, that he was breaking a rule he’d written for himself the day Elena died. Then she said, quiet enough that he almost didn’t hear her over the crickets, “Elena used to call me every six months and yell at me for not visiting more. She said you were turning into a hermit, that she was gonna hide all your model planes if you didn’t start leaving the house and having fun again.” He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of himself in months. He didn’t pull away.
They made tacos for dinner, using the leftover ground beef she had in the fridge and a jar of that same salsa she’d left on his porch four years prior, and he fumbled through the Spanish he’d learned from his abuela as a kid, making her snort margarita out her nose when he mispronounced “cilantro” so bad it sounded like a swear word. He left at 8:30, later than he’d planned, his usual schedule forgotten entirely, and when she walked him to the door she leaned up and kissed his cheek, her matte coral lipstick leaving a faint, warm stain on his skin. He didn’t wipe it off when he got in his truck, didn’t even reach for the napkin he kept tucked in the cupholder. He turned onto a side road he’d never noticed before, the warm tingle of her lipstick on his cheek still bright enough to cut through the dusk.
