Roy Pacheco is 53, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league scout for the Texas Rangers, logging 40,000 miles a year in his dented 2017 F150, living on gas station breakfast tacos and lukewarm Shiner Bock, his left hand permanently calloused from gripping a radar gun through 90-plus degree summer games. His biggest flaw? He’s held a grudge against the entire concept of intimacy since his ex-wife left him for a real estate agent in Plano 12 years prior, turning down every casual advance from waitresses and single moms at the VFW, convinced any connection is just a setup for disappointment. He’s been back in his hometown of Marlin for three days for the Fourth of July cookout, mostly to drop off a signed baseball for his late best friend’s teenaged son, his friend having passed from a sudden heart attack five years prior.
The air smells like mesquite charcoal and brisket rubbed with cayenne and brown sugar, the distant pop of test fireworks making the coonhounds tied up in the parking lot bark in unison, his beer can sweating so much it leaves a wet ring on the splintered pine picnic table. He’s wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his sunburnt forearm when someone taps his shoulder, and he turns to see Lila Mendez, his friend’s little sister, the girl he’d spent all of his senior year staring at across the high school cafeteria, the one his friend had threatened to “break both his kneecaps” if he ever so much as asked her out. She’s 48 now, her dark wavy hair streaked with a single silver streak above her left ear, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1980s Willie Nelson tour tee, a smudge of topsoil on her jaw from planting heirloom tomato plants that morning.
She slides onto the bench next to him, her bare thigh pressing warm against his frayed denim jeans through the thin fabric of her shorts, and he tenses up for half a second before forcing himself to relax. “Thought that was you,” she says, her voice lower than he remembers, rough from years of singing backup in her ex-husband’s honky tonk band. “My brother used to say you’d end up driving all over the state watching kids throw fastballs, that you’d never outgrow your stupid baseball obsession.” She laughs, and the sound cuts through the noise of the crowd, the screaming kids chasing each other with glow sticks and the Toby Keith blaring from the speaker by the grill, and he finds himself leaning in a little without thinking, his elbow brushing hers on the table edge.
They talk for 40 minutes, him telling her about the 19-year-old lefty he found in Laredo who throws 97 miles an hour with a curveball that drops like a brick, her telling him she moved back to town six months prior to run her mom’s feed store, that she left her husband after he cheated on her with a bartender in Austin. Every time she laughs she leans into him, her sun-warmed shoulder bumping his bicep, and he keeps catching her staring at his mouth before she looks away, her cheeks pink even under the harsh West Texas sun. He’s fighting every instinct he’s built up over the last 12 years, the voice in his head telling him this is a bad idea, that he’s breaking a promise to his dead friend, that he’s just going to get his heart broken again, but he can’t make himself stand up and leave.
When the first round of fireworks is scheduled to start, she tugs on his wrist, her fingers wrapping around the thick scar he got from falling off his friend’s motorcycle when he was 16, and pulls him toward the edge of the parking lot, to his truck. They climb up onto the tailgate, their legs dangling over the edge, and she hands him a cold beer she grabbed from a rolling cooler on the way over, her calloused hand brushing his as she passes it over. “My brother told me a month before he died,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear, over the first low boom of a firework going up, “that he was an idiot for telling me you weren’t allowed to ask me out. Said he always knew you’d be the only guy who wouldn’t treat me like garbage.”
Roy’s throat goes dry, and he stares at her, the red and purple light from the fireworks painting her face, her eyes glistening a little, and he realizes he’s been an idiot for 25 years, letting a stupid teenage threat and a bitter divorce keep him from the one person who ever made him feel like he didn’t have to perform toughness all the time. He reaches up, brushes the smudge of topsoil off her jaw with his thumb, and she doesn’t pull away, she leans into his touch, her hand coming up to rest on his wrist. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just watches the fireworks burst over the water tower he used to climb with her brother, the sound echoing off the old brick buildings downtown.
“I’m not good at this,” he says finally, his voice rougher than he means it to be. “I haven’t taken anyone out for dinner in 10 years. I leave socks on the floor and I forget to call people back and half the time I’m on the road for three weeks straight.” She laughs, and laces her fingers through his, her hand warm and rough from hauling 50-pound feed sacks all day, fitting perfectly against his own, scarred from the radar gun and years of swinging a bat in pickup games. “I don’t care about any of that,” she says, leaning in so close he can smell the coconut sunscreen on her skin and the vanilla lip balm she’s wearing, her breath fanning over his cheek. “I’ve waited 25 years to go get breakfast tacos with you. You can forget to call me all you want, as long as you bring extra hot salsa.”
The biggest firework of the night goes off right above them, painting the entire sky brilliant gold, and he leans in, presses his lips to hers, the taste of her lager and the vanilla lip balm mixing with the faint smoky taste of the brisket he ate an hour earlier. Some kid yells in the distance, and the crowd cheers so loud it rumbles in his chest, but he doesn’t pay attention to any of it, his hand cupping the back of her neck, her fingers tangling in the gray hair at the nape of his neck. When they pull apart, she grins at him, and tucks her head against his shoulder, and he wraps his arm around her, pulling her closer, not caring who from town sees them. For the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave, doesn’t feel like the world is just waiting to punch him in the gut. He rests his cheek on the top of her head, and watches the last of the fireworks fade into the dark, hazy summer sky.
