Leo Marquez leans against the cinder block neighborhood cooler, the cold seeping through the worn denim of his jeans to raise goosebumps on his thighs. It’s 82 degrees at 7 p.m. in mid-August, the air thick enough to drink, crickets chirping loud enough to cut through the roar of the bounce house and the distant yelp of a kid who dropped his snow cone on the sidewalk. He’s 62, retired three years from his job as an air traffic controller at Dulles, hasn’t been to a block party since his wife Elaine died seven years prior. The only reason he’s here now is 16-year-old Jessa from two doors down, who mowed his lawn for three weeks straight when he threw out his back replacing gutters last spring, begged him to man the bake sale table for 20 minutes so she could go ride the mechanical bull the HOA rented. He owed her. He’d planned to bolt the second she got back, half-empty IPA in one hand, keys tucked in the pocket of his faded navy air traffic controllers’ union hoodie he’s had since 2012. Elaine used to tease him it was so ratty it qualified as a biohazard.
He’s counting the spots of rust on the cooler edge when someone rounds the side, plate of grilled corn in one hand, and slams into his elbow hard enough to make beer slosh over the rim of his can onto the front of his hoodie. “Shit, sorry,” she says, and Leo’s throat goes tight. It’s Marnie. Elaine’s younger cousin, the one who drove eight hours from Buffalo for the funeral, showed up at his door with a pecan pie she’d baked herself because Elaine always told her it was the only thing that could get him to stop tinkering with his 1987 Ford F-150 on weekends. He hadn’t seen her since the wake, had ignored the three texts she sent in the months after asking if he wanted to get coffee, if he needed help clearing out Elaine’s closet, if he was okay. He’d thought if he talked to anyone who knew Elaine, anyone who remembered what their life looked like when it was whole, he’d shatter into pieces he couldn’t put back together. Guilt had curdled in his gut every time he saw her name pop up on his phone, so he’d deleted the thread, blocked her number, pretended she didn’t exist.
She’s 48 now, same wild auburn hair Elaine had, cut choppy to her shoulders, a scar snaking across her left wrist from the time they’d all gone to the lake in 2018 and she’d fallen off the bow of his boat trying to grab a floating beer can. Her nails are chipped mint green, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and grilled lime, the same scent she’d worn that day at the lake. She holds his gaze for two beats longer than casual politeness allows, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, exactly why he ghosted her. “You still wear that garbage hoodie?” she says, nodding at the beer foam soaking into the fabric. “I thought Elaine would’ve buried it with her.”
He doesn’t know what to say, so he just huffs a laugh, swipes at the foam with the back of his hand and smears it worse. She leans in before he can stop her, her shoulder brushing his chest, and brushes the foam off with the pad of her thumb, her knuckles grazing his forearm in the process. He can feel the callus on her middle finger, the one she gets from playing guitar, the same callus he’d felt when she’d handed him that pecan pie at the wake seven years prior. His skin prickles, heat climbing up his neck, and he’s equal parts horrified and giddy, guilt warring with a spark of desire he’d thought burned out for good the day they lowered Elaine’s casket into the ground.
“I moved into the old Henderson place three months ago,” she says, leaning back far enough that he can breathe again, but not so far that he can’t smell that sunscreen, can’t hear the crinkle of the corn husk in her other hand. “Saw your truck in the driveway last week. Knew it was yours, still has that dumb bumper sticker that says ‘I Control Skies Not Feelings.’ I almost knocked a dozen times. Didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’m not bothered,” he says before he can think better of it, and it’s true. He’d spent seven years hiding behind his fence, tinkering with his truck, eating frozen dinners alone, convinced any interaction with the world outside his four walls was a betrayal of the life he’d had with Elaine. But standing here, Marnie so close he can see the faint freckles across her nose, the same ones Elaine had, it doesn’t feel like betrayal. It feels like permission.
The mechanical bull roars in the distance, Jessa yells his name from the bake sale table, and he doesn’t even glance her way. “I got a pecan pie in my fridge,” he says, shifting his weight so his boot scuffs the grass. “Baked it last week for Elaine’s birthday. Didn’t have anyone to share it with. Wanna get out of here? No noise, no kids covered in cotton candy, just pie. I got cold coffee too, if you want.”
Her smile widens, crinkles forming at the corners of her eyes, and she slips her hand into his free one, her palm warm and rough against his. The last time he held someone’s hand that wasn’t a doctor or a cashier was the day Elaine died, and he doesn’t even flinch. “Thought you’d never ask,” she says.
They walk past the bounce house, past the mechanical bull, past Jessa who whoops and gives him a thumbs up when she sees them holding hands. The August humidity sticks his t-shirt to his back as they walk, and for the first time in 7 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush ahead to be alone.
