Ray Ortega, 62, retired border patrol K9 handler turned native plant nursery owner, has spent the last eight years avoiding any situation that might make him feel like he’s betraying his late wife, Linda. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a run-in with a smuggler’s knife back in 2012, a habit of chewing peppermint gum when he’s nervous, and a strict rule against flirting with anyone who even vaguely ties back to his old career or social circle. That rule crumbles the second he spots Clara Bennett’s scuffed white cowboy boots at the edge of his county fair booth.
He’s kneeling in the fine red dust, repotting a tiny saguaro seedling for a kid who ran off with his mom before paying, when the boots stop right in front of his folding pine table. He looks up, squinting against the harsh Tucson afternoon sun, and there she is. Clara, his old patrol partner Jake’s ex-wife, 58, sunspots scattered across her nose, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled tight in a braid, holding a half-eaten fried Oreo in one hand and a neon pink cotton candy stick in the other. He hasn’t seen her since Jake’s retirement party four years back, six months before they filed for divorce after 28 years of marriage.
The air smells like roasted green chiles, alfalfa hay, and sickly sweet cotton candy, loud enough that they have to lean in to hear each other over the roar of the carnival rides and the mariachi band playing three booths over. She leans across the table to get a closer look at a purple prickly pear start dotted with tiny pink buds, her shoulder brushing his when she points at it, and he catches a whiff of lavender perfume mixed with the sugary grease of the fried Oreo. He hasn’t felt that sharp, hot jolt of something like uncomplicated desire in so long he thinks for a second he’s having a hot flash.
They make small talk first, slow, like they’re both testing the edges of something they thought was off limits for decades. She’s in town for two weeks helping her oldest daughter move into a new house on the east side, she’s been living up in Flagstaff running a dog grooming business since the divorce, she still has the old German shepherd Jake left her when he moved to Florida to retire with his new girlfriend. He tells her about the 10-acre nursery he runs out in Vail, about the three rescue dogs he keeps out at the property, about how he still drives out to the desert every weekend to hike the same trails he used to patrol with his K9, Boss, who passed two years back.
Every time she laughs at one of his dumb old patrol stories, she leans in a little closer, her knee brushing his where they’re both sitting on hay bales he dragged out for tired customers. When they both reach for the same potted ocotillo start at the same time, their fingers brush, and he feels a tingle run all the way up his arm to the base of his skull. He pulls his hand back like he touched a bare cactus spine, his face hot under the sun, and he expects her to look embarrassed, but she just grins, one corner of her mouth tugging up like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
The guilt hits him slow, first a dull ache in his chest. Jake was his partner for 17 years. He stood up at their wedding. He spent more nights on stakeouts with Jake than he did at home for most of his 30s. He knows Jake treated her like an afterthought, forgot anniversaries, missed her kid’s soccer games, left for week-long fishing trips without even leaving a note, but loyalty’s always been his biggest flaw, even when the person he’s loyal to doesn’t deserve it. He thinks about Linda, about how she always told him he was too stubborn for his own good, that he deserved to be happy even after she was gone.
The fair starts winding down as the sun dips below the Santa Catalina mountains, painting the sky pink and orange, the carnival rides turning off one by one, the crowd thinning out to groups of teens sneaking beer behind the port-a-potties and vendors packing up their booths. He starts loading flats of cacti into the bed of his beat-up 2008 Silverado, and she offers to help, grabbing the heavier wooden display table without even asking. A gust of wind picks up, blowing loose dust and her braid across his face, and she stumbles over a loose cinder block at the edge of the parking lot. He catches her by the waist before she hits the ground, his hands splayed across the soft fabric of her flannel shirt, and they freeze, six inches apart, the distant sound of the mariachi band wrapping up their last set of the night hanging between them.
He doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t either. Her hand comes up to rest on his scarred forearm, her thumb brushing the raised edge of the old knife wound, and for a second he forgets about Jake, about Linda, about all the rules he’s spent the last eight years clinging to like a life raft. He can feel the heat of her through her shirt, can see the gold flecks in her brown eyes that he always noticed back at those old department barbecues, even when he tried to look away.
He asks her if she wants to grab a plate of roasted green chiles and a cold Modelo from the food truck that’s still open down the row, his voice rougher than he means it to be. She nods, her smile soft, not the teasing grin she had earlier, something warmer, something that feels like coming home. He tucks her braid behind her ear before he can think better of it, his calloused fingers brushing her cheek, and she leans into the touch like she’s been waiting for it for years.
