Rudy Galvan is 59, spent 32 years patching blown tires on bulldozers, excavators, and the odd broken-down farm tractor across central Texas, and his single biggest flaw is that he’s held a grudge against every woman his ex-wife ever called a friend for 12 full years, ever since she left him for a guy he’d gone to diesel trade school with and took the paid-off ranch house they’d built together. He lives in a 1998 Airstream he gutted and rebuilt himself parked on half an acre outside Bastrop, only leaves it for work and the weekly VFW fish fry on Friday nights, where he doesn’t have to make small talk with anyone who doesn’t know the difference between a 24.5-inch loader tire and a standard farm implement.
Mid-August, the heat still hangs thick enough to drink at 8 PM, the overhead fans in the VFW hall whir so loud you have to lean in to hear the person next to you, and the air smells like fried catfish, hushpuppies doused in butter, and cold Shiner Bock. He’s halfway through his second beer, grease still crusted under the nails of his left hand from patching a blown skid steer tire on a construction site that morning, when he spots her across the room.
It’s Lena Marquez, his ex’s former maid of honor, the woman he’d always assumed spread every ugly rumor about him after the divorce, the one he’d gone out of his way to avoid for over a decade. She’s wearing a faded Willie Nelson cutoff tee, frayed denim cutoffs that hit mid-thigh, scuffed brown cowboy boots, and silver hoop earrings that catch the last of the sunset bleeding through the screen door. She’s wiping sweat off the back of her neck with a crumpled paper napkin, and when her eyes land on him, she doesn’t scowl, or look away. She smiles, and starts walking over.
Rudy tenses, half considers grabbing his hat and bolting for the door, but his buddy Jimmie just set a plate of catfish down in front of him, and bailing that fast would make him look like a coward. He sits up straighter, keeps his face neutral, expects a snarky dig about his ex, or the time he showed up to their 20th wedding anniversary drunk after a 12-hour shift.
“Rudy Galvan,” she says, stopping next to his table, leaning one hip against the edge so her knee brushes his under the plastic. The heat of her leg seeps through his worn work jeans, and he doesn’t move away, even though every stubborn bone in his body tells him he should. “I heard you’re the only guy within 30 miles who won’t charge you double for an after-hours tire patch on heavy equipment.”
He blinks, taken aback. No mention of the ex, no snark. “Depends on how far out you are,” he says, taking a sip of beer to buy himself time to process. “And if you’ve got cold beer waiting when I show up.”
She laughs, a low, rough sound that makes the back of his neck prickle. She flags down the bartender, orders a Shiner, and when the bartender slides the frosty bottle across the table, her fingers brush his when she reaches for it. The skin of her hand is warm, calloused at the fingertips, and he feels a tingle run up his arm that he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his dad’s pickup.
She sits down across from him, tells him she just moved back to the area last month, after her second husband died of a heart attack on a fishing trip. She bought 10 acres out on Highway 21, has an old 2003 skid steer she picked up cheap at auction to clear brush for a vegetable garden, but the front left tire has a slow leak she can’t patch herself. She says she never bought the crap his ex spread about him after the divorce, thought he got a raw deal, moved to New Mexico two weeks after the split so she didn’t have to listen to all the gossip.
Rudy feels the tight knot of resentment he’s carried in his chest for 12 years loosen, just a little. He’s spent so long avoiding anyone tied to his old life he never stopped to think half the people around didn’t buy the lies his ex told. They talk for an hour, about the land she bought, about the time he patched a tire on a bulldozer at 2 AM in a thunderstorm last spring, about how the VFW’s catfish has gotten better since they switched to peanut oil for frying. Their knees brush again under the table, and this time he leans into it, just a little. When she leans in to tell him about the pair of rescue goats she just picked up from a farm down the road, he can smell coconut sunscreen on her skin, and the faint sweet smell of the peach cobbler she ate for dessert on her breath.
He offers to come out to her place at 8 AM the next day to patch the tire, tells her he won’t charge her for labor if she’s got breakfast waiting. She grins, says she makes homemade chorizo and eggs that’ll make him forget all about his ex-wife’s sad, overcooked scrambled eggs, and pulls out her phone so he can type in his number. His hand brushes hers again when he hands the phone back, and she holds eye contact for three full beats longer than she has to, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half smile that makes his chest feel tight.
She leaves 10 minutes later, says she’s got to feed the goats before it gets too dark, and gives his bicep a quick, firm squeeze when she stands up. He watches her walk to her beat-up silver Ford F150 parked out front, the way her cutoffs fit over her hips, and she waves over her shoulder right before she climbs in.
Jimmie claps him on the back, teases him about finally getting over his stupid grudge, about how Lena was always the hottest one in his ex’s friend group, and Rudy just grins, takes another sip of his beer, doesn’t bother denying it. He pulls out his phone, texts her a quick note that he’ll bring extra tire plugs just in case, and tucks the phone back in his pocket, already looking forward to the smell of chorizo and coffee drifting out of her kitchen when he pulls up the next morning.
