Ray Garza, 53, retired 5A central Texas high school football coach, runs Ray’s Red Chile Tamales out of a dented 2008 Ford F-150 at the east Austin farmers market every Saturday. He’s been at it six years, ever since his wife Lila packed her SUV and drove west for a Silicon Valley marketing job she’d hidden from him for three months. His worst flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, is the stupid, self-imposed rule he’s lived by ever since: he won’t so much as hold a 10-second conversation with any woman who has even a loose connection to Lila, no exceptions. He was packing his coolers at 4 p.m. that sweltering October Saturday, sweat dripping off the brim of his faded UT cap, hands crusted with leftover masa and ancho chile oil, when he glanced over at the honey stand next to him. The last of the customers had cleared out 20 minutes prior, and he had a dozen pork tamales left in the bottom cooler, the ones he usually gave to the teen running the peach stand, but that day he’d been holding them, half thinking of offering them to her.
Clara moved into the spot next to him three months prior, selling wildflower honey harvested from hives she keeps on 10 acres out in Dripping Springs. He figured out she was Lila’s maternal cousin the second he spotted the thin, jagged scar snaking up her left wrist, the exact one Lila used to recount getting when they were 12 and crashed a four-wheeler on their grandparents’ ranch outside San Antonio. He didn’t say anything for two weeks, until she brought it up offhand while they waited for the market manager to drop off extra change rolls, admitted she knew who he was too, and asked if they could keep their connection quiet to avoid nosy market gossip. He agreed easy, because the last thing he needed was word trickling back to Lila that he was fraternizing with her family. But the small, unplanned touches started almost immediately. The first time, she passed him a roll of packing tape after his dispenser shattered on the asphalt, their fingers brushing for half a second, sending a jolt up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was 17 and kissed Lila for the first time in the back of his dad’s pickup. He told himself it was just static from the dry, dust-heavy air. Then the week prior, she leaned over his cooler to grab a sample tamale he’d left out, her chest brushing his shoulder as she reached, and he caught a whiff of lavender lotion mixed with the thick, warm scent of raw honey that clung to her clothes all day, and he had to turn away to hide the flush creeping up his neck. He hated himself for it, hated that he was attracted to someone tied so closely to the woman who’d left him cold, hated that he felt like he was betraying a marriage that had been legally dead for half a decade.
They stood huddled close for 10 minutes, watching the rain pour so hard you could barely make out the street sign at the end of the market parking lot. The rain was loud enough that no one could hear them even if they were standing three feet away. She looked up at him first, dark hair plastered to her forehead, raindrops dripping off the edge of her eyelashes, and laughed quiet, said she’d been looking for an excuse to get him that close for weeks. He froze, didn’t know what to say, so he just stared, his arm still curled around her waist, the heat from her body seeping through his wet flannel shirt. She told him she knew Lila had left him without so much as a real goodbye, knew he’d been alone for years, said she didn’t care about the flimsy family connection, that they were both grown, no one got to tell them who they could or couldn’t spend time with. He thought about the stupid, arbitrary rule he’d been clinging to for years, thought about all the quiet nights he’d sat alone on his back porch eating cold tamales and watching old high school football game tapes, thought about how she never pried into his past, never asked about Lila, just laughed at his terrible jokes about entitled football parents and ranted to him about raccoons getting into her hives. The heavy, gnawing guilt he’d been carrying for months melted fast, faster than butter on a warm corn tortilla.
He offered to drive her back to his place, said he had a stack of dry sweatpants and hoodies in his dryer, a pot of brisket chili simmering on the stove since that morning, and a six pack of cold Shiner Bock in the fridge. She nodded, picked up the only unshattered jar of mesquite honey she’d pulled off the table before the awning fell, tucked it under her arm, and followed him to his truck. He opened the passenger door for her, his calloused, masa-stained hand brushing the small of her back as she climbed in, and when he slid into the driver’s seat a second later, she reached over, laced her fingers through his, and squeezed.
