Javier Mendez, 59, custom saddle maker, had dragged himself to the Hill Country farmers market only to drop off a youth roping saddle he’d spent three weeks tooling for a local 4-H kid. The August heat clung to his denim shirt like a wet rag, sweat beading at the edge of his worn cowboy hat, and he kept side-stepping strollers and cotton candy stands like they were landmines. He’d avoided large gatherings since his wife left him eight years prior, convinced his routine of workshop sanding, late night bourbon, and weekend trail rides was too rigid to accommodate anyone else’s noise.
He stepped back to avoid a toddler waving a dripping cherry snow cone, and his shoulder collided with soft, sun-warmed fabric. When he turned to apologize, he froze. Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s cousin, was standing there, holding a paper cup of elote, grinning like she’d been waiting to run into him. He hadn’t seen her in ten years, not since the last family Christmas before his ex moved out, when she’d teased him for hiding in the garage with his guitar instead of playing charades with the rest of the family. Her dark hair was streaked with silver now, pulled back in a braid, and she had a faint scar along her left cheekbone he didn’t remember, from a horse riding accident she’d had the year prior, she explained before he could ask.
They drifted toward the beer tent at the edge of the square without discussing it, both escaping the crush of the crowd. He bought them both shandies, cold and fizzing so hard the foam spilled over the edge of the cup onto his calloused fingers, and they sat at a wobbly pine picnic table half-shaded by a gnarled live oak. Their knees brushed under the table every time one of them shifted, and Javier couldn’t tell if she was doing it on purpose, if she could feel the jolt that zipped up his spine every time their denim-clad legs touched. She leaned in when he talked about the saddle he’d just finished, her elbow resting on the table six inches from his, her eyes fixed on his face like what he was saying mattered more than the mariachi band playing three tables over. He noticed she smelled like coconut sunscreen and the same peach bourbon he kept on the top shelf of his workshop fridge, and a stupid, giddy flutter kicked off in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old.
For 20 minutes he fought the urge to lean in closer, to brush the stray wisp of hair that kept falling across her forehead away. The old, leftover guilt hummed in the back of his head—this was his ex’s family, for Christ’s sake, he’d spent 12 years at family dinners with her, everyone always joked they were the two most stubborn people in the family, that they’d be better suited for each other than he and his ex ever were. He’d always brushed the jokes off back then, even when he’d catch her staring at him across the picnic table at summer cookouts, looking away fast like she’d been caught doing something wrong. But his ex had left him for a cruise ship bartender, hadn’t spoken to him in six years, and Lila was here, laughing at his dumb joke about the time a customer asked him to tool a portrait of his pet chihuahua on a $2,000 saddle, her foot brushing his ankle under the table now, intentional, no mistaking it.
She told him she’d moved back to town two weeks prior, to take care of her mom who’d had a stroke, that she was planning on staying permanently, opening a small equine therapy ranch on the 10 acre property her dad left her. When she reached across the table to brush a stray splinter of cedar off the front of his work shirt, her fingers lingered on his forearm for three full beats, the rough callus on her thumb catching on the frayed edge of his sleeve. “I found my dad’s old roping saddle in the attic last week,” she said, her voice lower now, like she was sharing a secret, “The leather’s cracked all to hell, and I don’t trust anyone else to fix it. You wanna come look at it tonight? My mom’s got a nurse staying over, so the guest house is all quiet.”
Javier didn’t hesitate. He nodded, watched her scribble her address on the back of a napkin from the beer tent, her handwriting loopy and familiar, same as it was when she used to slip him extra chocolate chip cookies at family dinners back when he was still married. They said their goodbyes, and he turned to walk back to his pickup, the youth saddle he’d come to drop off still slung over his shoulder, completely forgotten. He didn’t even remember the 4-H kid’s name, didn’t care, not right then. He tossed the saddle in the bed of the truck, unlocked the cab, and turned the key, the AC blowing cold in his face as he pulled out of the parking lot, already heading east toward the address she’d scrawled on the napkin crumpled in his front pocket.
