Ray Ruiz, 52, builds custom fishing rods for a living out of a converted cinder block garage on the western edge of Corpus Christi. He’s got a scar slashing across his left palm from a broken guide he rushed to sand down three years back, and a rule he’s stuck to religiously since his wife left him for a solar panel sales rep eight years prior: no mixed company that could spark small town gossip. He keeps interactions tight, surface level, sticks to talking about redfish runs or epoxy cure times, never stays at the weekly tradesmen’s beer garden longer than an hour.
The third week of October, the humidity’s still thick enough to drink, the beer garden strung with tiki lights that cast gold over crushed oyster shells underfoot. He’s halfway through his second Shiner Bock, condensation dripping down the bottle onto his paper tray of smoked brisket, when he spots her walking toward him. He recognizes her before she’s even ten feet away: Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the girl who’d snuck him a shot of tequila behind the reception hall at his wedding 22 years back, when he’d gotten so nervous he thought he might pass out. He hasn’t seen her since she moved to Austin for vet tech school right after that.
She’s 41 now, sun streaks in her dark wavy hair, a smudge of chlorhexidine on the inside of her left wrist, scuffed white work boots caked with a little mud from the farm call she’d told him about three sentences into saying hello. She leans against the edge of his picnic table, the side of her bare arm brushing his bicep when she sets her own beer down, and the scent of coconut sunscreen mixed with the faint, sharp tang of antiseptic hits him, sharper than the smell of mesquite from the food truck 20 feet away. She holds eye contact for two beats longer than polite, a half smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and teases him for still wearing that faded Texas A&M ball cap he’d refused to take off for his wedding photos.
He tenses up first, eyes darting around the beer garden to see if any of his ex’s friends are loitering nearby, if anyone’s already pulling out their phone to text the gossip chain. He should make an excuse to leave, grab his truck keys off the table, head home to sand down the rod he’s building for a high school kid’s first tournament. But every time he opens his mouth to say he’s got to go, she says something that makes him huff a laugh he didn’t know he had in him: how she’d always thought his ex was too stuck up for a guy who’d rather spend three days camped on a barrier island than go to a country club brunch, how she’d never forgotten that he’d stayed up until 2 a.m. fixing her little brother’s first fishing rod the summer before the wedding, after the kid snapped it trying to haul in a 30-pound red.
The crowd thins out as the sun dips below the Gulf, the tiki lights glowing brighter, the mariachi band in the corner slowing down their set to old love songs. She slides into the bench across from him, her knee brushing his under the table when she shifts to get more comfortable, and he doesn’t move his leg away. She tells him she didn’t move back to Corpus for the vet tech job at the small animal clinic downtown, like she told everyone else. She moved back because her aunt had mentioned over Christmas that Ray was still alone, still living in the same little house he’d bought with her cousin, still building rods and fishing by himself every weekend.
The old guilt flairs up first, hot and tight in his chest. This is his ex’s cousin. If anyone finds out they’re even talking, the gossip will spread faster than a grass fire in July, his ex will blow up his phone nonstop for weeks, he’ll have to hear snide comments at the hardware store for months. But when she leans in a little closer, her elbow on the table, her eyes soft, no judgment in them, the guilt melts away under something he hasn’t felt in eight years: warm, bright, wanting, like the first time he hooked a 40-pound red off the jetties when he was 16, his hands shaking so bad he thought he’d drop the rod.
He doesn’t say anything for a long second, just reaches across the table, brushes a strand of hair that fell in her face behind her ear, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just smiles, the same half smile she had when she snuck him that tequila 22 years prior.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop, see the custom rod he’s building for that high school kid, the one wrapped in maroon and white thread to match the high school’s colors, no bubbles in the epoxy finish he’d spent three hours perfecting that afternoon. She nods, stands up, her hand brushing his when she passes him his truck keys off the table, her fingers lingering for half a second longer than necessary.
They walk across the oyster shell parking lot to his beat up 2012 F150, the gulf breeze carrying the sound of the mariachi band still playing behind them, the air cool enough now to raise goosebumps on his bare arms. He unlocks the passenger door for her, holds it open while she slides in, then walks around to the driver’s side, climbs in, turns the key in the ignition. Before he can put the truck in drive, she reaches across the center console, laces her fingers through his, his hands rough with epoxy residue and sandpaper calluses, hers soft but with a few small scratches from a feral cat she’d treated that morning. He laces his fingers tighter around hers, doesn’t let go.
