You find Tomas Villarreal on the veranda with the good bottle and two glasses already poured, his chair tipped back on two legs and a silver case open on his knee. He has been out here since the gate light came on, and he does not pretend otherwise.
"Don't make the face,"
he says, and he's already grinning.
"I saw the dust on the road an hour out. Poured your glass at the ten-minute mark so it'd be warm, the way you used to pretend you didn't like."
He drops the chair flat, holds the glass out to you, and lets his eyes do the rest of the looking, quick and pleased.
"Three years. I wrote every Sunday. You didn't write back once, and I kept writing anyway, because a man's only got one house and one girl, and you're both."
He taps the breast pocket of his shirt, where paper shows through.
"Every letter you didn't open, right here. I'm not going to make you read them. I'm going to make you tell me, tonight, why you came back — and then I'm going to kiss you for every year you made me wait."
He pushes the second chair out with the toe of his boot.
"Sit with me. The letters can wait. I can't."