Manny Ruiz is 62, retired TDOT line painter, and he’s spent the eight years since his wife Elara’s sudden heart attack walling himself off from any romantic possibility, convinced even casual connection would be a betrayal of the 34 years they had together. He only agreed to come to the county annual crawfish boil because his old work buddy threatened to drop a bag of crawfish shells on his porch every night for a week if he bailed. He’s leaned against the side of the beer trailer for an hour now, peeling crawfish and sipping a lukewarm Shiner, the sun hot on the back of his neck where he forgot to put on sunscreen, the air thick with the smell of cayenne, boiled corn, and damp dirt.
He smells coconut sunscreen before he sees her, sharp and sweet over the spice, and when he turns she’s standing 18 inches away, close enough he can count the silver streaks woven through her dark curly hair, the faint laugh lines fanned out around her hazel eyes. It’s Lila, Elara’s first cousin, four years younger, the woman he’s carried a quiet, unacknowledged crush on since the day he met Elara at Lila’s 18th birthday cookout. He hasn’t seen her since Elara’s funeral, when she hugged him so tight his ribs ached and told him to call if he ever needed anything. He never called.
Her elbow brushes his bicep when she reaches for a bottle of hot sauce on the table next to him, the linen of her short-sleeve shirt soft against his sun-warmed skin through the faded gray of his old TDOT work shirt. She’s got a smudge of crawfish spice on her left cheekbone, and she’s wearing scuffed work boots caked in dirt, same as him. She teases him first, grinning, about still wearing the same beat-up steel toes he had on at her wedding 26 years prior. He teases her right back about still eating crawfish so fast she gets spice all over her face, and when she laughs, her knee bumps his where she’s leaned in against the table.
They talk for 45 minutes without either of them noticing the sky darkening. She tells him she moved back to town three weeks ago, bought the old ranch house on the county line, opened a small native plant nursery. He tells her about the little woodworking shop he set up in his garage, the Adirondack chairs he builds for the local veterans’ home. When they sit down on a splintered picnic bench to split a fresh plate of crawfish, her knee presses against his the whole time. She doesn’t move away. He doesn’t either. He keeps catching himself staring at the faint scar on her jaw, from the time she fell off her horse when they were 20, and has to look away, his throat tight, half horrified at how badly he wants to brush the hair off her forehead, to touch that scar with his thumb. He feels like he’s spitting on Elara’s memory just sitting this close, just wanting that, but he can’t bring himself to stand up and leave.
Lila tilts her chin up, her hair stuck to her forehead, her shirt soaked through so he can see the faint outline of the tattoo on her shoulder she got after her divorce last year. She holds eye contact with him for three full seconds, no smile, no look away, just a quiet little lift of her eyebrow. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t let the guilt he’s been carrying all afternoon creep in, just leans down and kisses her. It’s soft at first, tentative, then she tangles her hand in the back of his wet hair and pulls him closer, and she tastes like cold beer and cayenne and peppermint gum, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel like half a person.
They pull back when someone yells his name from the other side of the pavilion, his old TDOT buddy, who winks and turns away like he’s been placing bets on this for years. Lila laughs, swiping a thumb across his bottom lip to wipe off the spice she left there, and asks him if he wants to come back to her place after this, to see the live oak sapling she dug up from Elara’s childhood home, the one Elara planted when she was 10. He nods, squeezing her hand where it’s still tangled with his, and looks out at the rain turning the fairground dirt to mud, the faint twang of a country song playing from a parked pickup drifting through the rain. He tugs her a little closer, his shoulder pressed firm to hers, and lets the sound of her quiet laugh wrap around him warmer than any summer sun.
