Leo Rios is 62, retired air traffic controller, spent 31 years talking stressed pilots through thunderstorms and runway incursions out of the Fort Worth ARTCC before he walked away the week his wife Linda’s breast cancer turned terminal. His biggest flaw these days is saying no to every social invitation shoved his way, the kind of man who’d rather spend 12 hours soldering capacitors in a garage full of vintage CB radios than make small talk with people who only want to ask how he’s holding up. He only showed up to the volunteer fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his next door neighbor dropped off a pan of peach cobbler the week prior, and he doesn’t believe in unpaid favors.
The sun’s dipping low over the oak trees strung with fairy lights, the air thick with the smell of cumin, wood smoke, and cheap beer, when she walks up. Mara Carter, 58, widow of his old shift partner Jake, the woman he’d carried a stupid, unspoken crush on for 15 years back when they were all younger, when Jake would bring her to office cookouts and she’d laugh so hard at his dumb work stories she’d snort. She’s wearing a faded 2011 Texas Rangers World Series tee, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed white New Balances, the silver cowgirl pendant she never took off glinting against her collarbone, and the thin scar along her left wrist from the 2007 dirt bike crash is still there, pale and ragged at the edges.
She stops so close to him their elbows brush when she reaches for the stack of paper napkins sitting on the edge of his pickup bed. He freezes for half a second, the paper bowl of three-alarm chili in his hand tipping just enough that a drop spills onto his work boot. She smirks, holding his gaze for two beats longer than casual politeness requires, and says she’d know that ratty gray ARTCC ball cap anywhere. Jake used to talk about him all the time, she says, how he was the only controller on the night shift who didn’t lose his cool when that single-prop Cessna lost comms over Denton County back in 2012.
He doesn’t know what to say at first, half guilty that he’s even noticing how the golden hour light hits the gray streaks in her dark hair, half annoyed at himself for still having that stupid little flutter in his chest when she talks to him. The country band off by the fire station is playing an old George Strait track, people are yelling and laughing as they vote for the best chili, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and orange citrus on her when she leans in a little to hear him over the noise. She teases him about still drinking the same cheap Miller Lite he used to stock in the office break room fridge, and he teases her back about still wearing that silly cowgirl necklace that Jake got her for their 10th anniversary.
When she laughs at the joke, she leans forward and her hand rests on his forearm for three full seconds. He can feel the callus on the heel of her palm, the kind you get from digging in a garden for hours, and he doesn’t pull away. For a second he’s flooded with that sharp, familiar guilt, the kind that used to hit him every time he even thought about going on a date after Linda died, like he’s betraying the 34 years they had together, like he’s not allowed to want anything that doesn’t involve sitting alone in his garage. He almost makes up an excuse to leave, says he’s got a radio he’s halfway through fixing that needs his attention, but then she starts talking about grief, quiet and soft, says she spent four years feeling like she was cheating on Jake every time she smiled at a man for longer than 10 seconds.
She says she’s been trying to fix the old CB radio Jake had in his 1987 Silverado for three months, can’t get it to pick up any channels, asks if he’d be willing to take a look at it sometime, no pressure, no strings attached, just two people who get what it’s like to miss someone so bad it feels like a hole in your chest. He almost says no, almost falls back on the same excuse he’s used for every invitation for the last eight years, but then she looks up at him, her dark eyes soft, no expectation in her face, and he realizes he’s tired of being alone, tired of feeling like he has to punish himself for outliving the woman he loved.
He pulls a pen out of his work shirt pocket, scribbles his cell number on the back of a crumpled chili cookoff flyer, hands it to her. She tucks it into the pocket of her shorts, grins, and says she’ll text him tomorrow morning, before she turns to walk over to a group of her friends by the chili booths. He stands there for another minute, finishing the last sip of his beer, looking down at the faint, warm indent on his forearm where her hand had rested. He reaches into the cooler next to him, grabs another Miller Lite, twists the cap off, and takes a slow drink.
