Elio Ruiz, 57, retired Border Patrol K9 handler, had spent the better part of his afternoon kneeling in dust at the Pima County Fair, running his newest trainee—a lanky German shepherd named Jax—through obedience drills for a crowd of squealing 4H kids. He’d skipped the post-demo Q&A as soon as he could, ducking past cotton candy stands and tilt-a-whirl lines to the beer garden, ready to drink one cold draft alone before heading home to his quiet adobe on the edge of the desert. He’d perfected the art of being invisible in public these days, ever since his wife left twelve years prior, ever since his long-time K9 partner Mabel passed from cancer three years back; he kept his head down, avoided small talk, told himself he liked the quiet more than he’d ever liked company.
He was three sips into his lager when a pink cotton candy tray clattered to the dirt next to his scuffed work boot. The woman bending to grab it had sun-bleached auburn hair streaked with silver, cut short at her jaw, and when she looked up, her elbow brushing the side of his knee as she righted herself, he recognized her immediately. Lila Marlow. Ex-wife of his former patrol partner, Jake, the guy he’d ridden shift with for seven years, the best man at Elio’s wedding, the guy Elio hadn’t spoken to since Jake cheated on Lila and moved to Dallas eight years prior. He’d always carried a stupid, quiet torch for her, back when they were all younger—back when he’d buy her extra lemonade at barbecues, when he’d lie for Jake to cover his late nights out, when he’d beat himself up for even noticing how her laugh sounded like wind through chimes, how she always smelled like coconut sunscreen and alfalfa.
She slid onto the picnic bench across from him before he could mumble an excuse to leave, setting her beer next to his, her knuckle brushing his wrist when she set it down. He froze. He’d forgotten how close she sat to people, no sense of personal space, the same way she’d always been. She told him she was there showing her quarter horse at the 4H competition, that she and Jake had finalized their divorce two years prior, that she still ran the small horse ranch out in Vail they’d bought together. She leaned forward when she talked, elbows on the sticky plastic table, and her eyes kept flicking to the thin, pale scar slicing through the left side of his jaw, the one he’d gotten in 2017 when a suspect he was chasing had slashed at him with a box cutter. He noticed she was still wearing the tiny silver turquoise stud in her left ear, the matching pair he’d gotten Jake and Lila for their wedding gift in 2004.
The air around them smelled like fried oreos and exhaust from the fair rides, and somewhere down the midway a cover band was playing a slow, twangy version of a 1998 Tim McGraw song he’d danced to with his ex-wife at their wedding. His chest felt tight, half guilt, half something lighter he hadn’t felt in over a decade. He knew it was wrong, technically, to feel that pull to his best friend’s ex-wife, even if they’d been split for years, even if Jake was the one who’d ruined everything. But when she shifted her leg under the table and her knee brushed his, warm through the worn denim of his jeans, he didn’t pull away.
She asked him if he wanted to get out of there. Said she had a bottle of that smoky mescal he used to hoard stashed on her porch, said the horses would be grazing in the west pasture until sunset, said they could sit on her porch swing and watch the sky turn pink over the mountains if he wanted. He hesitated for three full seconds, his thumb running over the edge of his beer bottle, thinking about all the rules he’d set for himself, all the walls he’d built to keep people out, all the time he’d spent alone convincing himself he didn’t need anyone. Then he nodded.
They walked out to her beat-up silver Ford F150 together, his boots kicking up dust on the pavement, her shoulder brushing his every few steps. She opened the passenger door for him, and when he climbed up, she reached up to brush a stray strand of graying black hair off his forehead, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw scar for half a second. He didn’t flinch.
