Ray Garza, 62, retired Border Patrol K9 handler, had spent the better part of eight years perfecting the art of being left alone. His only regular company was his three-legged cattle dog Mabel, and the stack of vintage leather dog collars he restored in his adobe workshop outside Laredo, selling them twice a month at the downtown street fair. His biggest flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, was that he’d convinced himself any new joy would be a betrayal of his wife, Lena, who’d died of ovarian cancer in 2015. He’d avoided all their old friends, skipped every neighborhood cookout, even ignored Elara Voss’s half a dozen text checks in the first year after the funeral—Elara, who’d been Lena’s high school best friend, who’d stood right next to him at the graveside, who he’d always thought looked at him like he was a coward for shutting down.
The August fair heat was just breaking when the event coordinator shuffled Elara’s honey booth three feet away from his, after a snow cone stand’s compressor blew out next to her. Ray tensed immediately. He hadn’t spoken more than two words to her in seven years. She wore a sunflower yellow sundress, streaks of silver running through the braid slung over her shoulder, her forearms dusted with a faint coat of beeswax from pouring candles that morning. The warm, grassy scent of her raw honey mixed with the mink oil he used to condition leather, curling through the thick, still air between them.
He kept his head down for the first hour, sanding the edge of a 1970s hunting dog collar, pretending he didn’t notice when she leaned over to adjust a stack of honey jars, her bare elbow brushing his bicep as she reached. A gust of wind knocked a stack of her business cards onto the ground between their booths; they both bent down to grab them at the same time, his knuckles brushing the back of her hand, and she held eye contact with him for three full beats longer than polite, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Still wear those scuffed up patrol boots, I see,” she said, nodding at his footwear, the toes cracked from years of tramping through south Texas brush with his old K9 partner, Jax. He grunted, not sure what to say, his hand still burning where it had touched hers.
He told himself he was being ridiculous, that lusting after his dead wife’s best friend was the lowest thing he could do. He thought of Lena laughing at how stubborn he was, the way she’d always teased him for overthinking every small thing, and guilt twisted tight in his chest for a second, before he heard Elara snort laugh at a kid who’d asked if her bees had knees, and he looked up before he could stop himself. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, the same way Lena’s did when she was really amused, and something soft unclenched in his ribs he’d thought was gone forever.
He offered her one of the pork tamales his neighbor had packed for him when the lunch rush died down, stammering a little when he held the foil wrapper out to her, like he was a 16 year old kid asking a girl to prom instead of a grown man giving a friend a snack. She took it, their fingers brushing again, and thanked him, saying she’d forgotten to pack lunch that morning, too busy chasing a rogue swarm of bees off her neighbor’s sunflower feeder. They talked for an hour after that, about Mabel, about her hives out on her ranch 20 minutes west of town, about how Lena used to sneak tequila into their high school football games in a reusable water bottle. The mariachi band at the end of the street started playing an old George Strait song Lena used to sing in the shower, and Ray didn’t even flinch when he heard it, for the first time in years.
When the fair closed at 8, she helped him pack up his boxes of collars, and when he lifted a heavy crate into the back of his beat up Ford F150, his hand grazed her hip, and she didn’t step away, just looked up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the string light glow from the remaining booths. “You wanna grab a beer?” she asked, nodding at the neon sign of the dive bar two blocks over, and he said yes before he could talk himself out of it.
They sat on his tailgate in the bar’s parking lot an hour later, beer bottles sweating in their hands, the sky pink and purple over the downtown rooftops. She told him she never thought he was a coward, that she’d just been worried about him, that she’d missed having him around. He didn’t say anything for a minute, just leaned in, and kissed her, slow, the taste of her lime beer and the tamale’s red chile lingering on her lips. She kissed him back, her hand cupping the back of his neck, the callus on her thumb from lifting heavy honey crates rubbing the faint scar he’d gotten when Jax bit him by accident during a training exercise in 2012, and he felt like he could breathe for the first time since Lena took her last breath.
He drove her back to his place an hour later, a jar of her wildflower honey sitting in her lap, the radio playing that same George Strait song low. He reached over, rested his hand on her knee, and she laced her fingers through his, her palm warm against his. Mabel was waiting on the porch when they pulled up, her tail thumping so hard the whole porch shook when she saw Elara, who’d raised her from a puppy after Jax died.
