Ray Garza, 62, retired cattle auctioneer, balanced a paper plate stacked high with fried catfish, hushpuppies, and coleslaw on his knee as he settled into his usual picnic table at the Burnet VFW’s Friday night fish fry. Seven years prior, after his wife Marta died of breast cancer, he’d packed up their home in San Angelo and moved an hour west to this tiny Hill Country town, figuring the slower pace would let him hide from the parts of life that felt too loud, too sharp, too full of gaps where she used to be. His biggest flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, was that he’d turned that hiding into a habit so rigid he’d forgotten how to say yes to anything that didn’t involve restoring old ranch tools or watching 1970s western reruns alone on his couch.
The air smelled like cedar smoke, fried cornmeal, and the faint sweet tang of mesquite from the grill across the parking lot. He’d just taken a bite of catfish, crisp on the outside and flaky within, when he spotted her hovering a few feet away, plastic iced tea cup in one hand, a paper plate with a single hushpuppy in the other. Elena Marquez, 58, the woman who’d moved down from Sonoma six months prior to open the town’s first wine bar, the one the old boys at the feed store had been calling a “coastal carpetbagger” ever since she’d proposed adding outdoor picnic seating to the square within spitting distance of the livestock auction lot. Every seat at every other table was full, and she tilted her chin up, one silver hoop earring catching the string light glow, like she was daring him to tell her the spot across from him was taken.
He didn’t say a word. She sat down, and when she shifted to cross her legs, her denim-clad knee brushed his under the table. He froze, his mouth still full of catfish, suddenly hyper-aware that he hadn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t a cashier or his cousin’s wife in half a decade. She wiped a smudge of charcoal off her cheek with the back of her hand, and he noticed the faint calluses on her fingertips, the same kind he had on his own hands from yanking on wrench handles and plow parts, from years of working with your hands instead of behind a desk.
He didn’t mean to speak first, but the words came out before he could stop them, loud as if he was calling a bid on a prize Angus steer, so loud the guy at the next table glanced over. “Heard the council shot down your seating request Tuesday.” He flushed, ducked his head to take a sip of his own sweet tea, embarrassed by the volume his auctioneer’s training had drilled into him even in quiet spaces.
She laughed, low and throaty, no trace of offense. “Figured they would. Half those guys still think rosé is a fancy name for Kool-Aid. I’m not gonna push it too hard, not yet. I’ve got time to win them over.” She leaned forward a little, and the scent of lavender and lemon from her hand lotion drifted over, soft enough not to clash with the fried food and smoke around them. “Heard you called that 4H charity auction last month. Raised twelve grand for the kids’ show prizes. That’s impressive.”
He grunted, picked at a hushpuppy to avoid eye contact. He’d almost turned that gig down, hated the idea of standing up in front of a crowd again, but his neighbor’s kid had begged him. “Old habit. Hard to shake.” When he passed her the bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce sitting between them, their fingers brushed, and he felt a jolt run up his arm, sharp and warm, the kind of feeling he’d thought died with Marta. Part of him recoiled immediately, angry at himself for even noticing, for feeling anything other than the quiet grief he’d carried for so long it felt like a second skin. The other part of him wanted to lean closer, to hear her laugh again, to ask her what the hell made a woman leave California wine country for a town where the biggest event of the year was the county fair goat show.
They talked for an hour, until the fish fry crowd thinned out, until the fire pit had burned down to glowing embers and the crickets were buzzing loud in the oak trees lining the parking lot. She told him she’d moved to Texas after her own husband left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor, that she’d fallen in love with Hill Country peaches on a road trip ten years prior and decided she’d rather make peach sangria for small town Texans than pinot noir for rich tourists who couldn’t tell a cabernet from a merlot. He told her about Marta, about the 35 years he spent driving from auction to auction across West Texas, about the half-restored 1952 John Deere plow sitting in his garage that he’d been tinkering with for two years.
When she stood up to leave, she slung her canvas bag over her shoulder, and tilted her head at him. “I locked up the bar an hour ago, but I’ve got a fresh batch of sangria chilling back there. You wanna come taste it? No crowds, no old boys complaining about California transplants. Just us.”
He hesitated for three full seconds, his mind flashing to the western waiting for him at home, the empty house, the routine he’d clung to so tight for so long. Then he nodded.
The bar was warm when they walked in, smelled like vanilla candle wax and old oak and ripe peaches. She poured him a glass of sangria, sweet and cold, with a slice of peach and a sprig of mint floating on top, and leaned against the bar next to him, their shoulders pressed together. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for weeks,” she said, quiet now, no teasing in her voice. “I thought that auctioneer voice of yours was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.”
He laughed, surprised, and when he turned to look at her she was closer than he expected, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. He brushed a strand of silver hair off her face first, slow, like he was checking to make sure she wasn’t going to pull away, then he kissed her, soft at first, then a little firmer when she kissed him back, her hand resting light on his arm, her mouth tasting like peach and mint and iced tea.
He left at 11, when the streetlights were all on and the square was empty, and she promised to save him a seat at the bar the next night. He drove home with his windows down, the warm Hill Country air blowing through his hair, and he reached into the glove box for the jar of pickled okra he’d canned the weekend before, made with Marta’s old recipe, planning to bring it to her the next day. He pulled into his driveway, turned off the truck, and sat there for a minute, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, for the first time in seven years not dreading the sound of his alarm going off the next morning.
