Manny Rocha, 62, retired high school metal shop teacher, has a rule about small town events: show up, do the mandatory small talk with the volunteer fire crew he welds gear for free for, eat his weight in crawfish, and leave before he has to talk to Lila Marquez. He’s held that rule for 18 years, ever since he assumed she ratted him out to his late wife for sneaking off for a half-day fishing trip when his wife was in the hospital undergoing chemo. He never asked her about it, never gave her a chance to explain, just fixed his face into a permanent scowl whenever she was within 10 feet, and went out of his way to avoid the plant nursery she runs on the edge of town.
The annual fire department crawfish boil is the one event he can’t skip, not after he welded the custom boil pot they use every year, and not when the crew slips him free beer all night and saves him the first batch of spicy corn. He’s halfway through his third Shiner Bock, picking crawfish tails out of a mountain of red crustaceans piled on the newspaper-covered table, when the bench next to him creaks under someone’s weight. He doesn’t look up at first, assuming it’s one of the rookie firemen, until he catches a whiff of coconut lime sunscreen mixed with damp potting soil, and feels a denim-clad knee brush the side of his worn work boot.
He lifts his head, already scowling, and meets Lila’s eyes. She’s 58, still has the same thick dark hair streaked with gray that she pulls back in a braid, still has that little silver hoop earring in her left ear that catches the golden sunset light. She smirks, wiping a smudge of potting soil off her forearm with a paper napkin, and nods at his half-empty beer. “Relax, Rocha. All the other tables are full. I’m not here to steal your crawfish.”
He tenses up, his fingers curling around the cold, sweating beer can so tight his knuckles go white. He’s about to make up some excuse to leave, grab his cooler and head to his truck, when she snorts, leaning in a little so her shoulder brushes his flannel sleeve. “You’re still mad about that thing with Elena, aren’t you?”
The question catches him off guard. He blinks, and before he can stop himself, he’s growling the truth out. “You told her I was fishing instead of at the hospital. I missed her last good day because I was out on the lake, and I never would’ve gone if you hadn’t said you’d cover for me.”
Lila throws her head back and laughs, loud enough that a couple of the guys at the next table glance over. She taps the side of his beer can with her finger, her nail polish chipped pale green, and shakes her head. “You absolute idiot. I never told her. She found the fishing receipt in the pocket of your work boot when she was doing your laundry while you were at the hospital. She made me promise not to tell you she knew, said you were burning out staying up 20 hours a day with her, that you deserved that half day off. I’ve been covering for you for 18 years, and you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder this whole time?”
Manny feels the heat rise up his neck, all the way to the tips of his ears. He’d carried that anger, that guilt, for almost two decades, and it was all for nothing. He stares at her, at the crinkles around her dark brown eyes when she smiles, and suddenly notices the thin leather braided bracelet on her wrist, the one he made her in his metal shop class 20 years ago, when she’d brought him a batch of homemade tamales for Christmas. He’d assumed she’d thrown it away years ago.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, staring down at the pile of crawfish shells in front of him, feeling stupid, lighter than he has in years. “I’m an idiot.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says, patting his arm, her palm warm through the thin flannel. “I’ve been leaving tomato plants on your porch every spring for the last 10 years, by the way. You’re welcome for all those salsa batches you post about on the town Facebook group. I figured you’d never ask where they came from.”
He blinks again, shocked. He’d always thought those tomato plants were from the 4H kids doing their annual plant sale. He opens his mouth to say something, but she holds up a hand, grinning, and nods at the dirt road leading out of the park toward her nursery. “You gonna make it up to me? I just dug out a koi pond in my backyard, need custom welded edging around it to keep the raccoons from digging in. Free labor, obviously, to pay for 18 years of you ignoring me at every town event. And you have to bring beer. Good beer, not that cheap light stuff you drink when you’re fishing.”
He snorts, a real laugh, the kind he hasn’t let out in months. He nods, reaching for another crawfish, and when she passes him a ramekin of melted butter, their fingers brush. He doesn’t pull away this time, doesn’t tense up, just holds eye contact for a beat longer than he needs to. The air smells like cayenne and cut grass and coconut, the old George Strait song playing on the portable speaker drifts over the sound of kids screaming chasing fireflies, and the last of the guilt he’s carried for 18 years melts away like butter in the sun.
He pops the crawfish tail meat into his mouth, spicy and buttery, and makes a mental note to dig out his good welding helmet first thing tomorrow morning.
