Del Rios, 62, spent 38 years as a Texas cattle auctioneer, his voice sharp and rhythmic enough to coax an extra two thousand dollars out of a half-blind bull with a limp. He retired last spring, when the arthritis in his knees got so bad he could barely stand on the auction block for three hours straight. His only flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him well, was that he’d spent the eight years since his wife Ellen died clinging to guilt like a burr under a saddle, convinced any small spark of joy not directly tied to her memory was a betrayal. He’d turned down three setups from the ladies at his church, skipped the annual rancher’s Christmas dance two years running, and hadn’t so much as flirted with a waitress since the week after Ellen’s funeral.
Lila Mae Carter, 47, the new county extension agent, had been Ellen’s first cousin once removed, the kid who’d spent every summer at their ranch when she was a teen, showing 4-H rabbits and pestering Del to teach her how to call auctions. He hadn’t seen her in 10 years, not since she’d moved to Oklahoma for grad school, and for half a second he thought about ducking behind the beer cooler. He didn’t want to have to make small talk, didn’t want to have to explain why he still wore Ellen’s wedding ring on a chain around his neck, didn’t want to notice how her sun-streaked auburn hair fell over her shoulders, how the sleeves of her work shirt were rolled up to show freckled forearms crisscrossed with faint scratches from barbed wire.
She spotted him before he could move, grinning and waving as she wove through the crowd of ranch hands and teenaged couples sharing cotton candy. When she got close, she leaned in to yell over the band, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he caught a whiff of vanilla lotion mixed with the sharp, earthy smell of alfalfa she’d been hauling that afternoon. “Del Rios, I’d know that lopsided cowboy hat anywhere,” she said, her voice warm, the same Texas twang she’d had since she was 12. He couldn’t help but smile back. She ordered a cherry seltzer, and when the waitress set it down next to his beer, she laughed and said she still remembered the time he’d let her drive his old pickup around the ranch when she was 16, and she’d crashed into a fence post.
They talked for 45 minutes, the crowd thinning around them as the band finished their set and families herded tired kids back to their minivans. She sat on the picnic bench next to him, her knee brushing his every time she shifted to get comfortable, and when she reached for his beer bottle by mistake, thinking it was her seltzer, their fingers tangled for three long seconds before she pulled back, her cheeks pink. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all, her eyes locking onto his, no trace of the gawky teen he remembered in the way she held his gaze. He felt his chest tighten, a strange flutter he hadn’t felt in decades, and for a second he felt sick, like he was cheating on Ellen, like he should stand up and leave right then.
He was halfway to making an excuse about the dogs waiting for him when she leaned in, her voice dropping so low only he could hear it. “Ellen told me once, back when she was sick, that if anything ever happened to her, she didn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone,” she said, and he froze, his beer halfway to his lips. “Said you were too stubborn for your own good, that you’d act like being miserable was some kind of tribute to her, and she wanted me to kick your ass if you did that.” She laughed, soft, and reached out, brushing a piece of hay that had stuck to the brim of his hat. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16, for the record. Was too scared to say anything back then. Figured I’d wait until I wasn’t a kid anymore.”
The tension that had been coiled in his chest for eight years unspooled all at once, warm and loose, and he didn’t fight the smile that spread across his face. He reached up, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, her hand coming up to rest on his wrist. The last of the fair lights flickered off above the beer tent, and a cool October wind blew through, carrying the smell of cedar from the hills west of town.
He offered to drive her to the diner down the road for pecan pie, the same diner he and Ellen used to go to after fair days, and she nodded, grabbing her work bag from the bench. They walked to his pickup side by side, their hands brushing every few steps, and when they got to the passenger door, she pulled him down by the front of his flannel for a soft, slow kiss. He tastes the cherry seltzer on her lips, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the sharp twist of guilt in his gut.
