Manny Ruiz, 59, spent 32 years managing 80 acres of tangerine and orange groves outside Lakeland, Florida, before a bad hurricane wiped out half his stock and his wife Maria’s cancer took a turn for the worse three years back. He’d been stubborn his whole life—refused to hire extra help during harvest even when his knees ached, refused to take pain pills after his hip replacement, refused every neighbor’s invitation to trivia night at the tiki bar down the street, convinced every invite came from a place of pity, not actual interest. The only reason he caved that Tuesday was his AC died at 4pm, the house was still 92 degrees by 7, and a cold Yuengling sounded better than sweating through three more t-shirts waiting for the repair guy to show up tomorrow.
He grabbed the last empty stool at the far end of the bar, nodded at the bartender he’d known since high school, and was half way through his first sip when a warm shoulder brushed his bare bicep through his threadbare linen work shirt. “Sorry, Javi says your team is short a person and we’re short a person, so we’re merging,” a woman’s voice said, bright, a little harried, like she’d just run in from the heat. He turned, and it was Lena, the woman who’d moved into the house two doors down three months prior, the one he’d ducked behind his hedge every time she waved, the one who ran that pothos-filled plant shop downtown he’d walked past twice and kept walking. She smelled like coconut sunscreen and citrus blossom, the exact scent that used to cling to Maria’s hair after she’d spent a day walking the groves with him.
She slid onto the stool next to him, close enough that their knees brushed when she shifted to grab the trivia sheet off the sticky linoleum counter, and he flinched before he could stop himself. He hadn’t been that close to anyone who wasn’t a grocery store cashier or his doctor in two and a half years. She held out a hand, her nails painted terracotta, a faint scar snaking across her wrist from what looked like a thorn prick, and when he took it her palm was calloused, warm, firm. “Lena. I’ve been trying to flag you down for weeks to bring you a mango sapling, I noticed your old Valencia orange died last winter.” He mumbled his name, stared at the trivia sheet like it held the secrets of the universe, and tried not to fixate on how her laugh cut through the bar’s noisy chatter of clinking mugs and fried conch fritter orders like a knife through ripe fruit.
They worked surprisingly well together. He aced every 80s rock, college football, and agricultural trivia question, she nailed every 2010s pop culture, houseplant care, and 90s rom-com question, and they teased each other relentlessly the whole time. She made fun of him for not knowing Olivia Rodrigo’s discography, he made fun of her for mixing up the 1987 Heisman Trophy winner, and when their fingers brushed passing the pencil back and forth he didn’t flinch the third or fourth time. Halfway through the final round, he’d decided to leave, guilt coiling tight in his chest like a rattlesnake—he had no right to be having fun, no right to be noticing the way her curls fell in her face when she concentrated, no right to like the way she leaned in to whisper an answer so close her breath tickled his ear. He’d started to slide off the stool when she grabbed his wrist, gentle, not demanding, and said “C’mon, we’re two points up, don’t be a coward.” He sat back down.
They won. The prize was a $50 bar tab and a tacky neon plastic tiki mug that lit up when you poured liquid into it, and Lena whooped so loud half the bar turned to stare. They carried the mug out to the back patio to get away from the noise, the air still warm, thick with the smell of jasmine and burning oak from the fire pits. She leaned against the wooden rail next to him, their hips pressed together, no space between them, and didn’t move away when he didn’t shift back. He admitted he’d been avoiding her, admitted he felt like he was betraying Maria by even wanting to talk to someone new, admitted he’d thought about stopping by her shop three separate times and driven past every single one. She nodded, didn’t push, didn’t give him some sappy speech about moving on, just said she’d lost her partner in a motorcycle crash four years prior, and she still felt guilty every time she laughed so hard she snorted at a dumb meme.
She reached up then, brushed a fleck of fire pit ash off his cheek, her thumb lingering just long enough for him to feel the rough callus from repotting hundreds of plants, and he didn’t pull away. “The mango sapling’s still in my truck,” she said, smiling, the gold flecks in her hazel eyes catching the fire light. “I can drop it off tomorrow morning, if you’re home. We can plant it, if you want. I brought fertilizer.” He nodded, and for the first time in three years, the guilt in his chest didn’t feel like it was going to swallow him whole.
He walked her to her beat up Subaru, hugged her when she leaned in for it, the hug warm, familiar, not awkward at all. He climbed into his old F150, the tacky tiki mug sitting on the passenger seat next to his half-empty beer, turned the key, and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” came on the radio, the same song he and Maria used to dance to in the grove after harvest, when the sun was setting and the crickets were starting to chirp. He rolled down the window, let the warm jasmine-scented breeze curl through the cab, and didn’t even think to change the station.
