Javi Ruiz was halfway through his second carnitas taco and third cold Modelo when the bar stool next to him scraped against the linoleum, warm bare skin brushing his forearm as the person sat down. He didn’t look up at first, knew most of the VFW regulars by the scuff of their shoes, but these were flip flops, scuffed white rubber with a tiny sunflower sticker on the heel he’d never seen before.
When he finally lifted his chin, his jaw tightened so hard he could feel a throbbing start at his temple. It was Lena Marquez. He hadn’t seen her in 18 years, not since the screaming fight with his late wife Elaina right before he almost got suspended from the border patrol for selling custom holsters off duty, the fight he’d blamed entirely on Lena, convinced she’d tipped off department brass out of some misplaced holier-than-thou disdain for his side hustle. She was 58 now, silver streaks threading through her dark curly hair pulled back in a loose braid, a faded navy sundress that hit mid-calf, a thin pale scar wrapping around her left ankle from the time she tripped over his old K9 Max on that camping trip up Mount Lemmon in 2001.
She smirked, flagged the bartender for a Corona with extra lime, and said, “You still look like you’re sucking on a sour pickle when you’re mad. Some things don’t change.” He grunted, went back to picking pickled onion off his taco, but he could smell her shampoo—coconut and something soft, like desert wildflower—mixing with the fried pork and cilantro hanging thick in the air, the whir of the overhead fans pushing the scent right at him. He wanted to get up, move to a stool on the other end of the bar, but his work boots were stuck to the sticky linoleum, and he was weirdly curious why she was here, of all places.
She told him she moved back to town last month, her mom had been diagnosed with early stage dementia, so she’d shut down her stained glass studio in Santa Fe to be her full-time caregiver. Then she brought up the holster incident out of nowhere, said Elaina told her a year before she died that it was her cousin Ricky who ratted him out, mad Javi wouldn’t give him a free custom holster for his 30th birthday, that Lena never even knew he was selling them until after the suspension was already on the books.
That hit him like a punch to the gut. He’d carried that grudge for almost 20 years, turned down every Christmas card she sent after Elaina got sick, blocked her on Facebook, talked shit about her to the guys at the VFW more times than he could count. Hot embarrassment crept up his neck, and he mumbled an apology, staring at the foam melting into the bottom of his beer bottle.
She laughed, soft, not mean, and when she reached across him to grab the bottle of habanero hot sauce off the bar, her hand brushed his. He felt the rough callus on her index finger from years of cutting glass, the warmth of her skin seeping into the ragged scar he had on his knuckle from a time Max bit him by accident during training. She poured hot sauce on her al pastor taco, took a bite, crunched through a slice of pickled jalapeño, and said she’d always thought he was too stubborn for his own good, but Elaina always said he was the best man she ever knew.
They talked for an hour, maybe two, the bar emptied out as the evening wore on, the jukebox switching from old George Strait to Selena. Her knee brushed his under the bar every time she shifted in her seat, and she leaned in close when she told him about the stained glass window she was making for her mom’s room, covered in sunflowers and saguaro cacti, her breath fanning across his cheek, warm and smelling like lime and lager. He told her about the vintage 1952 roping saddle he was restoring for a cattle ranch up north, the leather so cracked he’d been working on it three hours a day for two weeks, and she asked if she could come see it sometime, said she’d always loved leather work, used to make her own tooled belts when she was a teenager.
He said yeah, tomorrow, 10 a.m., scribbled his address on a napkin he wiped taco grease off first. She tucked the napkin into the small pocket on the front of her sundress, grinned, and when she stood up to leave, she leaned in, brushed a crumb of carnitas off his chin with her thumb, the callus catching on the coarse stubble he’d forgotten to shave that morning. He walked her to her beat up Subaru parked out front, the air still warm enough he was sweating through the collar of his worn flannel shirt, and when she stopped at the driver’s side door, she leaned up and kissed him on the lips, slow, soft, no rush—neither of them were young enough to waste time playing hard to get.
She pulled away, said she’d see him tomorrow, climbed into her car, and waved as she pulled out of the parking lot. He stood there for a minute, the ghost of her peachy lipstick on his mouth, the coconut scent still lingering in the air around him, and he thought about how stupid he was to hold a grudge for 20 years, how he almost missed out on this. He unlocked his truck door 10 feet away, already looking forward to the sound of her work boots on his garage concrete the next morning.
