Rafe Mendez, 62, retired air traffic controller, walked into the VFW’s Friday fish fry like he did every week for the past four years, scuffed work boots sticking slightly to the linoleum just inside the screen door. He’d spent three decades making split-second, high-stakes calls for planes descending into Cleveland Hopkins, but in retirement he’d cultivated a routine so rigid he could set his watch by it: 6:15 PM arrival, Yuengling draft, two pieces of cod with extra tartar, a side of coleslaw, 8:00 PM exit to watch the local weather before bed. The only flaw he’d ever cop to was being pathologically risk-averse—his late wife, Elaine, used to tease him that he’d spend 20 minutes debating which flavor of ice cream to buy just to avoid making the “wrong” choice.
He slid onto his usual stool at the far end of the bar, and when the bartender turned around, he froze. It was Lena Hart, ex-wife of his old control tower coworker Jake, who’d left her for a younger flight attendant 12 years prior and moved to Fort Lauderdale. Rafe hadn’t seen her since the 2018 tower holiday party, where she’d beat three of the younger controllers at darts and bought the whole room a round of shots when her team won the office fantasy football league. He’d always thought she was far too sharp, far too bright, for the meatheads he worked with, and he’d never once joined in on the lewd jokes the guys made about her when she dropped Jake’s lunch off at the tower.
“Rafe, right?” She wiped a spot on the sticky oak bar top with a rag, her smile crinkling the corners of eyes that still held the same sharp glint he remembered. The coconut scent of her shampoo drifted across the bar when she leaned in, and he realized he was gripping his beer coaster so tight his knuckles were white. “Jake used to say you were the only guy in that tower who didn’t act like a 16-year-old with a learner’s permit half the time. What’re you drinking?”
He ordered his Yuengling, and when she passed the mug across the bar, her knuckle brushed the back of his hand. He felt the faint callus on her middle finger, and when he commented on it, she laughed and held her hand up to show him, explaining she’d been tending to her mom’s vegetable garden since she moved back to town three months prior to help with her mom’s rheumatoid arthritis. She’d taken the bartender gig part time to cover extra medical bills, she said, and most of the regulars were nice enough, if a little too eager to tell her the same war stories three times a night.
They talked for 45 minutes straight, Rafe forgetting to even order his fish. She leaned across the bar every time someone yelled an order from the other end, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she reached for a glass, and she kept holding eye contact with him longer than was strictly polite, like she was waiting for him to say something he wasn’t supposed to. A group of his old tower buddies waved at him from the corner booth, and he felt a flash of hot guilt—there was an unspoken rule, the kind everyone in their small town abided by, that you didn’t mess with your old coworker’s ex, even if the guy had treated her like garbage and hadn’t set foot in Ohio in a decade. He was supposed to be the boring, predictable widower, the guy who never stirred up drama, the guy who stuck to his routine.
When she rang up his second beer, she slid it across and rested her hand on his wrist for three full seconds, her thumb brushing the scar he’d gotten fixing his old Cessna two years prior. “My shift ends in 15 minutes,” she said, her voice low enough that no one else could hear. “I need to pick up 50 pounds of potting soil from the Walmart garden center, and my truck’s in the shop. You wanna give me a ride? I’ll buy you a slice of peach pie from their bakery as payment. The good kind, with the crumb top.”
Rafe glanced at the clock above the fryer. It was 7:48, 12 minutes before he was supposed to leave for home. He glanced at the guys in the booth, who were definitely staring now, and then back at Lena, who was biting her lower lip like she knew exactly what he was debating. For the first time in four years, he didn’t overthink it. He nodded, pulled his car keys out of his jeans pocket, and set them on the bar.
She finished her shift fast, wiping down the bar and grabbing her canvas tote bag from under the counter, and when they walked out the screen door, the warm May air hit him, thick with the smell of cut grass and the distant hum of crickets from the field next to the VFW parking lot. She linked her arm through his as they walked to his beat-up Ford F150, her hip brushing his with every step, and when he opened the passenger door for her, she leaned up and pressed a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, her lipstick leaving a faint pink mark he wouldn’t notice until he looked in the rearview mirror on the drive to Walmart.
