Manny Rios, 62, spent 32 years as an air traffic controller in Miami before retiring to the tiny Gulf coast town he and his late wife Linda bought a vacation home in back in 2008. His flaw is he can’t say no to anyone, which is why he’s stuck manning the beer cooler at the town’s Fourth of July fish fry instead of camped out on the dock with a cold one watching the fireworks like he’d planned. Most days he’s in the cinder block workshop behind his house rebuilding vintage 1970s Evinrude outboards for local commercial fishermen, his hands perpetually smudged with grease, a half-chewed peppermint sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since Linda died eight years prior, convinced any new connection would be a betrayal of the 34 years they had together, even when his fishing buddies nag him to join their dating app group chats.
The air smells like fried catfish, hushpuppies doused in hot sauce, and cut grass, the humidity thick enough to stick his faded Florida Gators t-shirt to his back. He’s just handed a seltzer to a kid in a sparkly cowboy hat when Lorna Carter steps up to the cooler, and his throat goes tight. She’s 58, Linda’s old book club buddy, married to Greg, his former supervisor at the Miami tower, a man everyone in town knows has been cheating on her with his 28-year-old admin for two years. Her auburn hair has more silver streaks in it than the last time he saw her six months prior, a faint scar above her left eyebrow from the 2011 jet ski crash she and Linda got into on the intracoastal, her feet bare in scuffed leather strappy sandals, a faded linen shirt unbuttoned at the collar to show a tiny silver opal necklace Linda gave her for her 50th birthday.
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“One lager,” she says, grinning, and he can hear the same laugh that used to fill his kitchen during book club potlucks. He reaches into the cooler, grabs an ice-cold can, and when he hands it to her their fingers brush, his calloused grease-stained thumb grazing the callus on her index finger from her constant gardening. A little foam spills over the rim when she pops the tab, landing on her wrist, and he grabs a napkin from the stack next to him, dabbing it off without thinking, his skin brushing the soft pulse point on her inner wrist. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, face hot, and she snorts, taking a long sip of beer.
They talk for 40 minutes straight, pausing only when people step up to grab drinks, picking right back up where they left off like no one interrupted. She teases him about still wearing the same scuffed work boots he wore to the tower every day, he teases her about still dumping three packets of hot sauce on every hushpuppy she eats. She mentions Greg drove up to a golf tournament in Georgia that morning, didn’t even bother lying about who he was bringing with him, and Manny’s jaw tightens. He’s hated Greg for years, hated the way he talked down to Lorna at parties, the way he’d leave her to clean up after all their work events alone, but he’d never said anything, not when they worked together, not after.
A group of teens runs past, chasing each other with sparklers, knocking a stack of paper cups off the top of the cooler. They both bend down to pick them up at the same time, their shoulders bumping, and he gets a whiff of her coconut sunscreen and the faint vanilla of her perfume, the same scent she wore to Linda’s funeral. He freezes for half a second, the internal war sharp enough to make his chest ache: he knows this is wrong, knows the town gossips will have a field day if they see them lingering too close, knows he promised Linda he’d never mess up the tight friend group they built, knows he’s not the kind of guy to go after a married woman. But when she looks up at him, grinning, holding a handful of crumpled cups, he can’t bring himself to step away.
The first firework goes off with a loud crack that rattles the cooler doors, the crowd cheering as red and gold sparks burst over the gulf. Everyone starts moving toward the dock, rushing to get the best spot, and Lorna steps back to get out of the way of a family hauling a cooler of their own, her heel catching on a loose plank of the picnic table bench behind her. She stumbles, and Manny reaches out on instinct, wrapping his hand around her waist to steady her, his palm flat against the soft skin of her lower back right above the waistband of her cutoffs, he can feel the faint dip of her hip bone through the thin fabric.
She doesn’t step away. She leans back into him, her shoulders pressed to his chest, tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes shiny from the bursts of light popping overhead. She whispers, so quiet he almost misses it over the roar of the fireworks and the crowd, “Greg’s not coming home till Tuesday. The kids are both up in Tampa for the holiday.”
He nods, not trusting himself to speak, just gives her waist a small, firm squeeze to let her know he heard. They stay like that for the rest of the 20 minute fireworks show, his hand never leaving her waist, no one pays them any mind, everyone’s too busy staring up at the sky, oohing and aahing at the blue and purple bursts reflecting off the water. When the last firework fades to smoke, she picks up her empty beer can, gives his arm a quick, warm pat, and walks off toward the parking lot without looking back.
He stays at the cooler for another 15 minutes, packs up the leftover ice, hands the last two unopened beers to a pair of old commercial fishermen he’s rebuilt motors for, then locks up the cooler and hands the key to the event organizer. He climbs into his beat up 2006 Ford F150, turns the key, the radio blaring an old Tom Petty track he and Linda used to listen to on road trips. He stops at the stop sign at the end of Lorna’s street for 10 whole seconds, then turns right instead of left toward his own house. Her front porch light is on, glowing warm through the oak trees lining her walkway.
