Arnie Mendez, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller at Dallas-Fort Worth International, talking down 747s in thunderstorms, rerouting private jets when a celebrity threw a fit, never making a single mistake that put anyone in danger. The tradeoff was he forgot how to do anything without running three possible bad outcomes through his head first, a habit that only got worse after his wife Diane died of breast cancer four years prior. He’d stuck to the same rigid routine ever since: coffee at 6 a.m., 20 minutes of stretching, grocery run every Wednesday, Texas hold ‘em at the VFW every Thursday night, farmers market every Saturday at 8 a.m. sharp.
He’d heard the gossip about Lena Hart for three weeks before he ever met her. She’d bought the old run-down ranch two doors down from his, left a six-figure corporate lawyer job in Austin after a messy divorce, rode a dented neon orange dirt bike up and down the rural backroads at 7 a.m. on Sundays, wore cutoff jeans even when the temperature dipped below 60. The guys at the VFW called her a troublemaker, said women her age should know better than to “act like a teenager with something to prove.” Arnie had nodded along, even when he’d found himself staring out his kitchen window when he heard her bike roar past, curious more than anything.
They reached for the same flat of peaches at the farmers market stand at the exact same time, their knuckles brushing. Her hand was calloused at the fingertips, a faint smudge of grease on her wrist, and she smelled like jasmine perfume and motor oil, a combination that made his chest feel tight for half a second. She laughed, a low, rough sound, and pulled her hand back, but didn’t step away, the toe of her scuffed work boot almost touching his. “Figured I’d beat the old timers to the good peaches,” she said, holding his gaze, no awkward looking away, no polite smile to soften the edge of her teasing. “Guess I underestimated you.”
He’d meant to mumble a quick apology, grab a different flat, and head to the honey stand like he always did. Instead he found himself talking, telling her he made peach jam every year, that the stand’s fruit was the only one within 20 miles that didn’t grow their peaches with weird pesticides. She leaned in when he talked, her shoulder almost pressed to his, and he noticed the thin silver streak running through her dark brown hair, the small scar cutting across her left cheekbone, like she’d run into a tree branch once and didn’t bother to fix it. She said she was trying to make peach cobbler for the volunteer fire department potluck the next weekend, but she couldn’t get the post hole digger she’d bought at a garage sale to work, needed to fix the broken fence line on the west side of her property before her two rescue dogs dug their way out.
He offered to lend her his digger before he could think through the possible outcomes: the guys at the VFW teasing him for chasing the “new divorcee”, the chance she’d think he was a creep, the risk he’d mess up the routine he’d clung to for four years. She grinned, wide and bright, and wrote her address on the back of a peach vendor’s receipt, even though he already knew where she lived, and said she’d have a cold beer waiting for him if he came by around 4 that afternoon.
He sat on his couch for two hours after he got home, staring at the post hole digger leaning against his garage wall, almost bailing three separate times. He’d not spent any one-on-one time with a woman that wasn’t a cashier or his cousin’s wife since Diane died, had convinced himself he was fine being alone, that spontaneity was for people who didn’t have to live with the weight of a single mistake ruining everything. Then he heard her dirt bike roar past his house, and he grabbed the digger and headed down the road before he could overthink it again.
He showed her how to adjust the handle height first, their shoulders pressing together when he reached around her to loosen the bolt, the heat of her skin seeping through her flannel shirt. The sun dipped low by the time they’d dug three holes, painting the oak trees in her backyard pink and gold, and she handed him a cold Shiner Bock, their fingers brushing again when he took it from her. She admitted she’d heard the gossip about her around town, that half the neighborhood thought she was some kind of wild deviant for not joining the garden club and wearing pants to church. He admitted he’d listened to the gossip, felt stupid for it, that he’d spent so long sticking to his routine he’d forgotten how to see people as more than the stories other people told about them.
She leaned in then, kissed him slow, the beer and faint taste of peach on her lips, and he didn’t overthink it, didn’t run through the possible bad outcomes, just kissed her back, his hand resting light on her waist. They sat on her back porch after that, drinking a second beer, watching fireflies blink to life in the tall grass at the edge of her property. She said she still had the flat of peaches in her kitchen, if he wanted to stay and test a trial batch of cobbler that night. He nodded, didn’t even mention the laundry he’d planned to do, the documentary he’d set to record on the History Channel. He reached for the stray peach sitting on the porch rail beside him, wiped it on the leg of his work jeans, took a bite, sweet juice running down his chin. She laughed, swiped the juice off with her thumb, and licked it clean before he could reach for a napkin.
