Manny Ruiz, 62, spent most of the last seven years avoiding any gathering that had more than six people in attendance. The retired central Florida citrus grove manager had sold his 42-acre tangerine operation six months after his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, told himself he was perfectly happy puttering in his garage workshop restoring vintage fishing rods, turning down every neighbor’s invitation to potlucks, cook-offs, and local fire department fundraisers without a second thought. The only reason he was standing in the middle of the town square at 2 p.m. on a humid Saturday, surrounded by crockpots sweating condensation and the thick, spicy smell of smoked pork and chili powder, was his 10-year-old grandson Javi had begged him to enter his famous brisket chili in the annual contest, even making a hand-drawn sign for his booth that said “POP-POP’S TANGERINE SMOKE CHILI” in neon marker.
He was sipping a lukewarm beer, half tuning out the guy from the county road crew bragging about his secret habanero recipe three booths over, when she walked up. He’d seen her around town a handful of times over the last three months: Elara Voss, 54, the new county librarian, moved here from Portland after a messy divorce, according to the neighborhood grapevine he pretended not to listen to. She was wearing a faded linen button-down covered in tiny sunflower prints, cutoff denim shorts, and scuffed white sneakers, silver streaks cutting through her dark wavy hair where the sun hit it. She leaned in close to read Javi’s sign, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she shifted to avoid a kid running past with a snow cone, the fabric soft and warm against his bare skin.
“Tangerine smoke?” she said, raising her voice a little to be heard over the bluegrass band playing on the stage at the end of the square. Her voice was low, a little rough, like she smoked a cigarette every now and then, and she held eye contact longer than most people did, hazel eyes flecked with gold crinkling at the corners when he huffed a laugh.
“Got the idea from the wood we used to burn in the grove heaters when frost was coming,” he said, reaching for a sample cup for her. His hand brushed hers when he passed it over, and he felt a stupid little jolt up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 16 and asked Linda to prom. He immediately felt guilty, a tight twist in his chest, like he was doing something wrong, like Linda was watching him from somewhere and shaking her head. He pulled his hand back fast, busied himself wiping down the edge of the crockpot with a rag.
She took a bite of the chili, closed her eyes for half a second, and made a soft, impressed sound that made the back of his neck heat up. “That’s the best thing I’ve eaten since I moved here,” she said, wiping a smudge of chili sauce off her chin with the back of her hand. “Beats the canned stuff I survive on most weeknights, that’s for sure.”
They talked for 15 minutes, he found out she’d been a high school English teacher before she went back to school for library science, she had a 22-year-old daughter studying marine biology in Tampa, she’d never been fishing in her life but had inherited her dad’s old 12-foot surf rod when he passed last year, it was sitting in her attic broken, she had no idea who could fix it. He kept waiting for the guilt to get worse, for him to make an excuse to end the conversation, but it didn’t. Instead, he found himself leaning in when she talked, laughing at her story about accidentally setting off the library’s smoke alarm when she tried to make popcorn for story time, noticing the tiny constellation of freckles across her nose.
The sky opened up out of nowhere, the way it always does in central Florida in July, fat cold raindrops splattering down hard enough to make the dust on the pavement kick up. Everyone scrambled for cover, people yelling and grabbing crockpots and folding chairs, and she grabbed his wrist without thinking, her fingers warm and firm around his bone, pulling him under the awning of the fire station entryway ten feet away. They were pressed shoulder to shoulder, the rain drumming so loud on the metal awning they could barely hear anything else, the smell of wet asphalt and her coconut shampoo wrapping around him.
“I’ve been asking around for weeks about someone who fixes old rods,” she said, turning to look at him, their faces only a foot apart now. “Everyone kept saying to ask Manny Ruiz, but everyone also said you never leave your house. I was starting to think you were a myth.”
He stared at her for a second, the guilt that had been niggling at him all afternoon softening, fading, the way Linda always used to tell him it would, once he stopped being an idiot and stopped trying to be lonely on purpose. She never wanted him to shut the world out after she was gone, had made him promise, more than once, that he’d find something that made him happy again, that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life sitting in the garage talking to a bunch of old fishing rods.
He pulled the crumpled stack of chili contest entry slips out of his jeans pocket, fished a pen out of his flannel shirt, scrawled his cell number on the back of one, pressed it into her palm. His fingers lingered on hers for a second, calloused from decades of trimming citrus branches and sanding down rod blanks, against her softer, ink-stained hands. “I’m free tomorrow morning,” he said. “Bring the rod. And coffee. Black, no sugar. I’ve got a workshop out behind my house, we can take a look at it.”
She tucked the slip into the pocket of her shorts, grinning, and nodded. The rain let up as fast as it started, the sun coming out again, turning the parking lot into a steam bath. She waved at him over her shoulder as she walked back to her beat-up Subaru, and he stood there for a minute, watching her go, before he heard Javi yelling his name from across the square.
He turned around, saw Javi running toward him, holding a big blue first place ribbon in one hand and the $200 gift card to the local bait and tackle shop that was the grand prize in the other. He took the ribbon from Javi, ran his thumb over the shiny blue fabric, and smiled, already thinking about what kind of braided line he’d recommend for her dad’s old surf rod, how he’d teach her to cast it out over the gulf when they got it fixed.
