Manny Ruiz, 62, spent 34 years supervising trail maintenance for the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge before retiring three years prior. His biggest flaw? He’d perfected the art of ghosting casual social invites so well, half the town thought he was either dead or had moved to Mexico to live off tequila and street tacos, neither of which was true. He’d pulled back from everything after his wife left him for a seasonal wildland firefighter half his age 18 years prior, convinced any connection he built would just end up leaving him with a half-empty closet and a fridge full of her favorite dill pickles he’d never eat.
He only left his off-grid cabin twice a week: once to stock up on supplies at the local grocery store, once for the Elks Lodge Friday fish fry, where he could sit in the back corner table, eat his cod extra crispy, and avoid small talk without anyone bothering him. That’s how it went, every single week, until the second Friday in March.
The lodge was packed that night, the annual fundraiser for the local youth baseball team drawing a bigger crowd than usual. Manny was halfway through his first bite of tangy coleslaw when a shadow fell across his table. He looked up, squinting against the warm string lights strung over the dining area, and saw a woman he’d never seen before, holding a paper plate piled high with fried catfish, a jar of house pickles tucked under one arm. She said all the other tables were full, asked if she could sit across from him, her voice soft, like she was used to people saying no. He hesitated, then grunted an affirmative, already mentally mapping the quickest exit if she started asking too many questions about what he did with his days.
She sat down, her knee brushing his under the Formica table when she shifted to get comfortable, the contact light but electric enough that he jolted a little, spilling a drop of tartar sauce on his worn work jeans. She laughed, not mocking, just warm, the sound cutting through the chatter of the room like a knife through warm butter. She said her name was Clara, she was 54, a botanical illustrator from Portland, in town to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. She smelled like jasmine hand lotion and the lime she’d squeezed over her fish, and when she leaned in to hear him over the noise of a group of old ranchers yelling about college football across the room, her sun-bleached hair brushed the edge of his forearm.
He found himself talking more than he had in months, telling her about the hidden trails in the refuge where the desert marigolds and ocotillo bloomed the brightest this time of year, about the baby javelina he’d spotted rooting around a prickly pear bush on his volunteer run the week prior. When they both reached for the bottle of habanero hot sauce sitting in the middle of the table at the same time, their hands brushed, her skin soft against his calloused knuckles, and he felt a heat climb up his neck that had nothing to do with the lodge’s overactive heater.
He was halfway to making an excuse to leave, disgusted with himself for acting like a flustered 16-year-old asking a girl to prom, when she said she’d been trying to find someone who knew the area well enough to show her the best bloom spots for a new series of illustrations she was working on. She was looking at him like she already knew what he was going to say, her dark eyes glinting, her knee still pressed lightly against his under the table, no sign she was going to move any time soon.
He offered to take her out the next morning, 6 a.m., before the desert heat climbed into the 90s, and she said yes before he even finished the sentence. She scribbled her cell number on a napkin printed with the Elks Lodge logo, sliding it across the table to him, her finger lingering on his wrist for two full seconds when he reached to take it. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck in the parking lot, and she hugged him quick before climbing in, her chest pressing against his for a single, warm beat, the scent of jasmine clinging to his flannel shirt long after she pulled out of the lot.
He didn’t sleep much that night, alternating between kicking himself for agreeing to something that could only end badly, and replaying the feel of her hand on his wrist, the sound of her laugh. He showed up at the trailhead 20 minutes early the next morning, two iced coffees tucked in the cup holder of his truck, already sweating a little even in the pre-dawn cool. He saw her pickup round the bend a few minutes later, and when she hopped out, holding a crinkly paper bag full of homemade carnitas empanadas she’d baked that morning, she was grinning so wide her cheeks were pink. He reached out to take the bag from her, and their fingers tangled together for a second, neither of them pulling away.
