Cole Hewitt, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter with a scar slashing across his left eyebrow and a habit of keeping to himself, leaned against a splintered cedar fence at the west end of the Mesa summer street fair, a half-eaten chili dog in one hand and a cold canned IPA in the other. He’d moved to Arizona six months prior to be closer to his 7-year-old granddaughter, and since then, his weekends had alternated between soccer practice drop-offs and solo trips to The Rusty Spur, the dive bar three blocks from his bungalow, where he’d sit in the back booth and watch baseball without talking to anyone. He’d avoided even casual flirting since his wife Linda died of breast cancer seven years earlier, convinced any attempt at connection at his age was either sad or a betrayal of the 32 years they’d spent together. The air smelled like fried Oreos, charcoal, and dust kicked up by kids chasing neon balloons, and the sky was deep indigo, streaked with the last faint orange of the sunset.
A sharp bump to his elbow made him slosh a little IPA onto his worn work boot. He looked down, ready to brush off the apology before it even came, and found Marisol Ruiz grinning up at him, 54, owner of The Rusty Spur, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid laced with a stray piece of pink cotton candy, her Johnny Cash tee cut off at the waist to show a faint silver piercing at her navel, scuffed white Converse on her feet. She held a half-eaten cotton candy stick in one hand, pink sugar dusted on her thumb and the edge of her lower lip. “Figured I’d find you here,” she said, leaning against the fence next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she settled in. “You’re the only guy I know who pays cash for every beer and never leaves a tip less than 20%, even when the tap’s slow.”