Manny Ruiz, 57, retired air traffic controller out of Fort Worth, had mapped out his Saturday down to the minute by 7 a.m. He’d cut the grass, tuned up his old F150, hit the food truck rally at the neighborhood park for one brisket taco extra cilantro, and be home on the couch in time for the first pitch of the Rangers doubleheader, a cold Shiner in the cupholder next to his recliner. 30 years of tracking incoming jets, weighing every possible variable before making a call, had wired him to hate surprises. Even after 8 years of retirement, after his wife Linda had passed from breast cancer and left him with nothing but a half-finished garden and a closet full of her sunhats, he still wrote every errand down in a spiral notebook, crossed each one off with the same blue ballpoint he’d kept in his work bag his entire career.
The taco line was longer than he’d accounted for, stretched 12 people deep past the cotton candy stand, and he shifted his weight from one boot to the other, already mentally adjusting his game day timeline, when something soft and warm bumped his elbow. He looked down, first at the strappy brown sandal on the foot next to his, then up at the woman holding a paper cup of iced tea, grinning like she’d just pulled a prank she didn’t feel bad about. He recognized her immediately: Lena Marlow, ex-wife of his old shift supervisor, Jake, who’d retired three years before him and moved to Austin with his new, 20-years-younger wife. Manny had spoken to her maybe 10 times total in 15 years, all at office holiday parties, all when Jake was standing three feet away, glowering like he thought anyone who looked at his wife too long was going to steal her.
She smelled like cedar and ripe peaches, the iced tea in her cup sloshing a little over the edge onto the back of his hand when she leaned around him to grab a stack of napkins from the dispenser behind his shoulder. “Sorry about that,” she said, dabbing at his knuckle with a napkin, her thumb brushing the scar he’d gotten fixing his truck last spring, rough and warm. “Line’s a shitshow today. Everyone and their mom came out now that the heat broke.” Her silver hoop earrings caught the golden hour light, and when she tilted her head to look up at him, he realized he’d forgotten how to speak for three full seconds. He’d always thought she was the prettiest woman in the room at every office party, had even let himself daydream about her once or twice after Linda died, but he’d shut those thoughts down fast. Jake was still a friend, sort of. Crossing that line felt like breaking a rule he’d had written in his head for decades.
He mumbled something about the line moving slow, wiped the iced tea off his hand, tried to focus on the guy at the front of the line ordering 20 tacos for his kid’s soccer team. But Lena didn’t move away. She leaned against the picnic table next to him, her shoulder brushing his every time someone squeezed past the line to get to the elote stand, and started asking him questions. How retirement was treating him. If he still had that old F150 he used to talk about. If Linda’s garden was still growing out back of his house. He answered her in short, gruff bursts at first, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, still mentally counting down the minutes until he could get his taco and bolt for his truck. But when she laughed at his dumb joke about how he’d killed three of Linda’s tomato plants last summer because he forgot to water them, something loosened in his chest. He hadn’t made a woman laugh like that in years.
They both reached for the same bottle of habanero hot sauce at the same time when they got their tacos, their fingers overlapping on the cold glass, and she didn’t pull away for a full beat, just raised an eyebrow at him. “You gonna share, Ruiz?” she said, teasing, and he handed her the bottle, his face hot enough that he was pretty sure she could tell he was flustered. He was halfway through his taco, already trying to talk himself into asking her if she wanted to sit at the picnic table instead of him going home, when she beat him to it. She held up a paper plate with three churros dusted in cinnamon sugar, said she’d bought them on a whim and couldn’t eat all three, did he want to split them. His first instinct was to say no, the game was starting in 10 minutes, he had a Shiner waiting in his fridge, this was not part of the plan. But then she licked a smudge of cinnamon off her lower lip, and he nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
They sat on the edge of the picnic table, legs swinging, the mariachi band two stalls over playing a slow cumbia, the smell of fried onions and grilled meat wrapping around them. She told him she’d opened a small plant nursery out on the west side last year, that she’d left Jake three years before he’d even moved to Austin, that she’d always thought he was too uptight and controlling, that Manny was always the only guy at the office parties who didn’t hit on her or make stupid jokes about Jake being a hardass. “I always thought you were cute, you know,” she said, like it was no big deal, taking a bite of a churro, crumbs sticking to her lip. “You were always the quiet one in the corner, drinking beer and watching the game instead of running your mouth like all the other guys.” Manny froze mid-bite, his brain short-circuiting, like he’d just gotten a transmission from a jet he thought was 100 miles out. He’d never in a million years thought she’d noticed him, let alone thought he was cute. She laughed at the look on his face, nudged his knee with hers, said she wasn’t messing with him. She had the Rangers game on her smart TV at her place, and a bottle of good reposado tequila in the cabinet, if he wanted to come over. No pressure, she said. He could go home if he wanted.
He didn’t even think about the spiral notebook in his pocket, didn’t think about the Shiner in his fridge, didn’t think about the rule he’d had in his head for 15 years about not going after your old coworker’s ex-wife. He stuffed his leftover half of a taco in the paper bag, wiped the cinnamon off his fingers on his jeans, slid off the picnic table. She smiled, grabbed his wrist for half a second to lead him through the crowd toward her beat-up Subaru, her hand warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He slid into the passenger seat, the scent of cedar and peach iced tea wrapping around him before she even turned the key.
