Manny Rios, 61, retired TxDOT bridge inspector, drags his scuffed folding chair to the exact same spot he claims every Friday at the small Texas town’s square summer concert series. He’s got a single Shiner Bock in a faded Longhorns koozie, a bag of salted peanuts in his cargo pocket, and a short list of unbreakable rules he’s stuck to since his wife Elaina passed eight years prior. No flirting with strangers. No dancing with anyone who isn’t Elaina. No staying later than the last George Strait cover. He’s a lifelong stickler for rules, built his entire career calling out shoddy rebar work even when it cost him a promotion he’d earned twice over.
The air smells like cut grass and fried corn dogs from the food truck by the gazebo, opening notes of a Waylon Jennings track humming from the speakers while the band tunes up. He’s just popped the tab on his beer when someone drops a folding chair two inches from his left leg, metal scraping the side of his work boot. He looks up, and his throat goes dry. It’s Lorna Hale. Jim Hale’s widow. Jim was his boss for 19 years, the man who’d screamed at him for calling out that rebar work, who retired three years prior and dropped dead of a heart attack three months back while mowing his lawn. Manny has carried a quiet, guilty crush on Lorna since the 2011 company holiday party, when he knelt to fix the broken strap on her sparkly heel while Jim slurred at the bar with district reps. He’d never said a word to anyone, never looked at her longer than three seconds when Jim was in the room, wrote it off as a stupid, harmless lapse.
She wears cutoff denim shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, graying blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, coconut sunscreen rolling off her skin in warm waves that hit him before she speaks. “Manny, right? I knew I’d find you here. Jim always said you never missed these, even when you hated crowds.” She sits, crosses her legs, and the frayed hem of her shorts brushes his bare knee. The jolt up his spine is one he hasn’t felt since Elaina was alive. He fumbles his beer, catches it before it spills, nods, ears burning. “Yeah. Elaina loved these things. Figure I owe it to her to show up.”
She pulls a bag of honey roasted peanuts from her tote, holds it out, and her bare knuckle brushes his when he reaches for a handful. Her ring finger is bare, no wedding band, and a sharp twist of guilt hits his gut, like he’s stealing something he has no right to touch. “Jim talked about you all the time,” she says, popping a peanut in her mouth, eyes fixed on the fiddle player testing his strings. “Said you were the only inspector in the whole district who never cut a single corner, even when it made everyone’s life harder. Wished half his hires had half your backbone.”
They talk through the first three sets: old work stories, Elaina’s love of terrible 90s country, how Jim had been planning to fix up their old fishing boat before he died. When she leans over to point out the teen fiddler, grandson of their old coworker, her shoulder presses into his bicep, soft and warm through his thin cotton button down. He freezes, doesn’t move, doesn’t want her to pull away. Half of him screams this is wrong, Jim’s only been gone three months, he’s breaking every rule he set for himself after Elaina died. The other half leans into the sound of her laugh, the way she tilts her head when she listens, the fact she notices he hates honey roasted peanuts and hands him a separate bag of salted ones she stashed in her tote.
The band slows for the first slow dance of the night, opening notes of Amarillo by Morning drifting over the crowd, couples standing to sway in the grass. Lorna turns to him, brown eyes bright under string lights strung between oak trees, and holds out her hand. “You wanna dance?”
He hesitates three full seconds, every rule he’s ever made ringing in his ears, then takes her hand. Her palm is soft, a little calloused at the fingertips from gardening, and she laces their fingers together when they walk to the floor. He rests his hand light on her waist, she leans in so her mouth is right by his ear, breath warm against his neck. “I had a crush on you at that 2011 holiday party,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “When you fixed my heel. Jim didn’t even notice it broke. I waited for you to say something for years.”
Manny’s chest feels so tight he can barely breathe, like all the weight he’s carried for eight years just lifted. “I wanted to,” he says, voice rough. “Never thought I had the right.”
They sway through the whole song, no more words, just moving to the music, the crowd fading to background noise. When the song ends, she doesn’t pull away, tilts her chin up a little, and he leans down, kisses her soft, tastes peppermint gum and the crisp white wine she’s been drinking all night. Some guy in a cowboy hat hoots from the sidelines, but neither pays him any mind.
They walk back to her beat up silver F150 after the concert, crickets chirping loud in the grass, string lights flickering off one by one behind them. She scrawls her phone number on a crumpled corn dog napkin, shoves it in his hand, asks him to come over for coffee tomorrow, to help sort through Jim’s old work files if he wants. He says yes. He closes her truck door, watches her pull out of the lot, waves when she honks turning onto Main Street. He tucks the napkin into the breast pocket of his shirt, and smiles for the first time all summer without feeling guilty.
