Manny Rios, 62, retired DFW air traffic controller, had spent the past eight years building a life so small and predictable he could map it out in his sleep: up at 6 a.m. to feed the stray barn cat behind his workshop, three hours tinkering on the 1972 F-150 he’d been restoring since his wife passed, Miller High Life at the VFW post off Highway 377 every Friday night, no exceptions. His biggest flaw, the one his sister nagged him about every holiday, was that he refused to let anyone new into his orbit—no blind dates, no volunteer gigs, not even letting the kid down the street help him haul engine parts, insisted he could handle everything on his own. He’d built that wall after losing Linda to ovarian cancer, figured he’d already had his one good shot at love, no need to go hunting for another that would only end in hurt.
He was leaning against the VFW’s beer cooler last month, scraping fried catfish crumbs off the knee of his worn denim jeans, when she walked in. Lila, Joe’s youngest daughter, 38, just moved back to town after a messy divorce from a stockbroker in Austin, he’d heard Joe grumble about it a few weeks prior. He’d known her since she was 10, had driven her to her first high school soccer game when Joe got stuck on a plumbing call, had caught her sneaking sips of Joe’s beer at a backyard cookout when she was 16 and lied to Joe that he’d sent her to get the cooler. He’d always thought of her as a loud, pigtailed kid with a scraped knee, so when she walked over to him, smile bright, he almost dropped his half-empty beer bottle.
She leaned in for a hug, and the smell of coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip gloss hit him square in the chest, her soft knit shoulder brushing the scar on his left forearm from the engine fire he’d had last summer. When she pulled back, she held eye contact for three full beats, no kid-like darting away, no awkward half-smile, just steady, warm, like she was actually looking at him, not just the old guy her dad drank beer with. “I heard you’re still working on that F-150,” she said, nodding at the truck magnet stuck to his work vest. “I brought you lemonade when you were rebuilding the transmission back in 2006, remember? You gave me a dollar for it.”
Manny’s throat went dry. He did remember. He also remembered he’d spent the entire drive home after that cookout yelling at himself for even noticing how her legs looked in cutoff shorts that day, had called himself a dirty old man for a full week after, had avoided Joe’s house for two months just to make sure he didn’t run into her again. That old shame flared up hot now, and he shifted his weight back, putting six inches of space between them, like she was a storm system he needed to vector away from the runway. “Yeah,” he mumbled, taking a long sip of beer. “Still working on it.”
She didn’t take the hint to leave. She grabbed a paper plate of catfish and sat down next to him at the rickety folding table, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifted. She asked him about the truck, about the stray cat he fed, about the air traffic control stories he used to tell at cookouts, the ones about the pilot who tried to land a Cessna with a pet peacock on his lap. She laughed at the peacock story so hard she snort-laughed, and when she reached across the table to grab a hushpuppy off his plate, her knuckles grazed his, and he flinched like he’d touched a hot exhaust pipe. He spent the next hour fighting with himself, half of him screaming that this was wrong, that she was Joe’s kid, that he was 24 years older than her, that everyone in the VFW was staring, the other half thrumming with a feeling he hadn’t felt since Linda was alive, light, giddy, like he was 17 again sneaking into a drive-in movie with a girl he liked.
By 9 p.m. the karaoke had started up, Joe was slurring his way through a Johnny Cash song, and Manny decided he needed to leave before he did something stupid. He grabbed a to-go box of leftover hushpuppies for his neighbor’s golden retriever, said goodbye to Joe, and headed out into the parking lot, where a light drizzle was falling, turning the gravel slick under his work boots. He heard footsteps behind him, turned, and Lila was there, holding her jacket over her head, her hair stuck to her forehead. “I walked here,” she said, grinning. “Was gonna call an Uber, but if you’re heading towards my side of town…”
He nodded, and they walked toward his beat-up 2008 Silverado, the rain picking up a little. Halfway there, her boot slipped on a patch of wet gravel, and he reached out automatically, grabbing her waist to steady her. Her sweater was soft under his calloused hands, her waist smaller than he expected, and she didn’t pull away. She tilted her chin up, the streetlight glinting off her wet eyelashes, and said, “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16, you know. I thought you’d never look at me as anything other than Joe’s dumb kid.”
Manny froze, every rule he’d built for himself over the past eight years screaming in his head, the shame, the fear, the worry about what Joe would say, what everyone at the VFW would say. But then he looked at her, really looked at her, the way she was biting her lip like she was nervous he’d laugh, the way her hand was resting lightly on his arm, and he realized the wall he’d built wasn’t protecting anyone, least of all him. He’d spent so long being scared of being seen as a creep, of being hurt again, that he’d shut out any chance of feeling anything good. “I’m an idiot,” he said, quiet enough that only she could hear it over the rain.
She laughed, soft, and leaned in a little closer, her forehead almost touching his. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”
He drove her to her small bungalow on the west side of town, the radio playing old Merle Haggard songs the whole way, their hands resting on the center console, his pinky brushing hers every time he shifted gears. When they pulled up to her porch, she turned to him, raised an eyebrow, and asked if he wanted to come in for coffee. He hesitated for half a second, thinking about Joe, about the VFW gossip, about the empty house waiting for him back on his property. Then he nodded.
He set the crumpled hushpuppy box on her porch rail before he followed her inside.
