Elroy Mendez, 62, retired lineman for the Central Texas Electric Co-op, had not set foot at the Hill County Fair in eight years. He’d skipped every iteration since his wife, Carol, passed from breast cancer in 2015, telling anyone who asked that fair crowds were too loud, the food was too greasy, and he’d rather spend his weekends sanding the frame of his 1972 Ford F-100 in the pole barn behind his house. The only reason he showed this year was his 11-year-old granddaughter, Lila, who’d spent six months raising a show heifer named Buttercup and threatened to hide all his favorite socket sets if he missed her judging slot.
He’d stayed for the judging, cheered loud enough that Lila rolled her eyes and told him to be quiet when she took second place, then slipped away to the beer tent by the grandstand once she’d run off to show her ribbon to her 4-H friends. He leaned against a splintered cedar fence post, twisted the cap off a cold Shiner Bock, and let the August heat stick the hem of his faded work shirt to his back. The air smelled like fried Oreos, alfalfa, and the faint diesel fumes of the fair’s old tractor pulling a hayride full of screaming kids.
He was halfway through his beer when a woman carrying a stack of cotton candy cones for the local animal rescue fundraiser stumbled into his side. Her bare arm brushed the thick, silvery scar that ran the length of his left bicep, the one he’d gotten when a power line snapped during the 2017 ice storm, and he flinched not from pain, but from the sharp, warm jolt of the contact. She steadied herself with one hand on his shoulder, apologized, then laughed when she recognized him. It was Maren Hale, 58, Carol’s second cousin, who ran the county’s no-kill animal shelter, who’d always called him out on his stubborn crap even when Carol was alive, who he’d actively avoided for eight years because he knew she’d never let him get away with hiding away in his barn forever.
She didn’t move away after she’d righted herself, just leaned against the fence post next to him, her shoulder barely an inch from his, the coconut scent of her sunscreen mixing with the fried dough in the air. She held his gaze when he mumbled a greeting, didn’t look away when he cleared his throat and shifted his weight awkwardly, like she knew exactly how flustered he was. “Thought you’d holed up in that barn for good,” she said, grinning, nodding at the dirt under his fingernails that he’d never been able to scrub completely clean, even after three years off the job.
He made a joke about Lila’s socket set threat, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, the kind of loud, unselfconscious laugh he hadn’t heard from anyone in years. He kept telling himself he was being an idiot, that he was betraying Carol by even noticing how the sun had bleached streaks of honey into her dark blonde hair, how the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled, how every time she passed his beer back to him after taking a sip (she’d stolen it off him without asking, like they’d been doing it their whole lives) her fingers brushed his, sending a heat up his arm that had nothing to do with the August sun. He’d spent eight years convincing himself he was too set in his ways, too old for any of this, that desire was something he’d buried with Carol. He hated the part of him that wanted to lean in closer, hated that he was even entertaining the thought.
The first firework went off over the grandstand then, a burst of neon pink that lit up the whole fairground, and a group of little kids darted between them, chasing each other with glow sticks. Maren stumbled forward, and he caught her by the waist, his calloused hands wrapping around the soft fabric of her floral sundress, and her hand flew to his chest, right over his heart, which was hammering so hard he was sure she could feel it through his shirt. She didn’t pull away. She just looked up at him, the blue and gold bursts of the fireworks painting her cheeks, and said, quiet enough only he could hear over the crowd’s oohs, “I’ve waited eight years for you to stop moping long enough to look at me.”
He didn’t say anything for a second, just ran his thumb over the back of her hand where it rested on his chest, and realized he wasn’t betraying anyone. Carol would have teased him for being such a stubborn idiot, would have told him he deserved to stop being lonely. The disgust he’d felt at his own desire ten minutes earlier melted away, replaced by a soft, giddy excitement he hadn’t felt since he was 19, asking Carol to marry him at the very same fair grandstand.
When the last firework fizzled out and the crowd started to disperse, Maren asked if he wanted to split a fried pecan pie from the concession stand at the end of the midway. He said yes, let her slip her hand into his, the calluses on her palms from lifting rescue dogs matching the calluses on his from climbing poles, and they walked through the thinning crowd, the sound of the Ferris wheel’s creaky hinges mixing with the distant low of the cows in the 4-H barn. He didn’t even glance around to see if any of his old lineman buddies were watching, didn’t care if they teased him about it the next time he ran into them at the diner. He squeezed her hand a little tighter, and she squeezed back.
