Cole Hewitt, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter with a scar slashing across his left eyebrow and a habit of keeping to himself, leaned against a splintered cedar fence at the west end of the Mesa summer street fair, a half-eaten chili dog in one hand and a cold canned IPA in the other. He’d moved to Arizona six months prior to be closer to his 7-year-old granddaughter, and since then, his weekends had alternated between soccer practice drop-offs and solo trips to The Rusty Spur, the dive bar three blocks from his bungalow, where he’d sit in the back booth and watch baseball without talking to anyone. He’d avoided even casual flirting since his wife Linda died of breast cancer seven years earlier, convinced any attempt at connection at his age was either sad or a betrayal of the 32 years they’d spent together. The air smelled like fried Oreos, charcoal, and dust kicked up by kids chasing neon balloons, and the sky was deep indigo, streaked with the last faint orange of the sunset.
A sharp bump to his elbow made him slosh a little IPA onto his worn work boot. He looked down, ready to brush off the apology before it even came, and found Marisol Ruiz grinning up at him, 54, owner of The Rusty Spur, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid laced with a stray piece of pink cotton candy, her Johnny Cash tee cut off at the waist to show a faint silver piercing at her navel, scuffed white Converse on her feet. She held a half-eaten cotton candy stick in one hand, pink sugar dusted on her thumb and the edge of her lower lip. “Figured I’d find you here,” she said, leaning against the fence next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she settled in. “You’re the only guy I know who pays cash for every beer and never leaves a tip less than 20%, even when the tap’s slow.”
He huffed a laugh, wiping the beer off his boot with the back of his hand. They walked away from the thinning crowd, down a side street lined with squat palm trees, the amber glow of streetlights gilding the edges of her braid. She teased him about sitting in the back booth every Tuesday and Thursday, never acknowledging the regulars who tried to invite him to their poker games. He teased her about charging him an extra dollar for IPA every time he showed up right as the bar opened, like she was penalizing him for being punctual. Her hand grazed his wrist every time she emphasized a point, light, warm, and every time it happened, he felt a jolt he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager picking up Linda for their first date at a drive-in movie. He checked his watch half an hour later, saw it was 10:03 PM, and nodded at the yard sign staked into a nearby lawn advertising the new city ordinance the conservative council had passed two weeks prior, banning “unlawful public fraternization between unrelated unmarried adults after 10 PM,” a stupid rule that had been making the local news for weeks, a petty attempt to police who spent time with who after dark.
Marisol snorted, swatting the sign with her cotton candy stick hard enough to make it wobble. “Like those old farts have anything better to do than worry about two people getting a taco after 10.” She stopped at a chipped wooden picnic table outside a closed laundromat, sat down on the splintered bench, and patted the spot next to her. He sat, their thighs barely an inch apart, and he could smell coconut shampoo mixed with the sweet, sticky tang of cotton candy on her. The conflict hit him sharp then, half of him screaming that he was being unfaithful to Linda, that he should go home, watch a rerun of a western, be alone like he was supposed to be, the other half of him hungry for the warmth of her next to him, for the way she laughed at his stupid story about accidentally setting his own boot on fire during a 2019 wildfire outside Bend, for the way she didn’t treat him like a broken old man whose best years were behind him.
He heard a distant police siren, faint, a few blocks over, and felt a ridiculous, giddy thrill run up his spine, like they were two teens sneaking out after curfew, not two people in their 50s sitting outside a laundromat. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me out for three months,” she said suddenly, turning to face him, her dark eyes bright in the streetlight, their knees knocking together when she shifted. “Thought you were either still married or just not interested in women at all.”
He blinked, surprised, and told her the truth, that he hadn’t asked anyone out since 1987, that he was scared of messing it up, of feeling like he was replacing the only woman he’d ever loved. She nodded, her expression softening, and reached up to brush a crumb of chili dog off his chin, her thumb lingering on his jaw for half a second, warm, calloused from hauling beer kegs at the bar. “I get it,” she said, quiet. “After my ex left me for his 28-year-old admin three years ago, I thought I’d never let anyone sit this close to me again. Doesn’t mean you have to stop living just because someone’s gone.”
He didn’t pull away when she leaned in, didn’t overthink it when she kissed him soft on the mouth, tasting like cotton candy and root beer, her hand coming to rest on his knee, calloused fingers pressing light through the denim of his jeans. He kissed her back slow, no rush, his hand resting light on her waist, the distant siren fading out entirely, the only sound the chirp of crickets and the faint hum of a window AC unit from the house across the street. They sat there for another hour, talking about his granddaughter’s obsession with unicorn stickers, about her plan to add fish tacos to the bar’s menu next month, their thighs pressed together the whole time, no awkward gaps, no awkward pauses.
He walked her to her beat-up silver pickup two blocks over, and she stopped at the driver’s side door, grinning up at him as she unlocked it. “I’ll comp your IPA tomorrow if you show up before 7,” she said, leaning in to kiss him one more time, quick this time, before she climbed into the truck. He stood on the curb, watching her reverse out of the spot, and she hit the brakes once, rolling down the window to wave at him before she pulled away. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his work jeans, felt the crumpled receipt for his chili dog and a folded drawing his granddaughter had made him that morning, and smiled when he saw her brake lights flash once more before she turned the corner onto Main Street.
