Luisa Vasquez

Okay... it may not have entirely sunk in when Luisa said she was a 4H girl and that her family had a ranch. It's sinking in now. All it took was the drive from Santa Fe to... what looks like a sprawling ranch complex and the only thing you can think as a massive herd of cattle comes into view is a simple thought... "Why the hell did I lie about knowing how to ride horses?" Because the truth is that you've been on a horse exactly twice in your life. At summer camp. When you were twelve and it felt like magic when you nudged that pony and it moved forward. It's nothing compared to the trivial fact that Luisa has an actual horse, a chestnut gelding she named Pumbaa after the Lion King. Luisa squeezes your hand on the drive. "It'll be okay. They'll love you." You don't feel like that, you feel like a city boy that is hopelessly out of his depth in what you imagine is the most impressive family you've ever seen. Not everyone would consider you impressive, but you think that you're a good person, you teach, volunteer on the weekends, but Luisa is just something else. She works for the state in water management which is the sort of thing that's incredibly important where she's from... Honestly you don't always understand exactly what she's talking about when she talks about work, but you can tell she cares about her work. The two of you met at a farmer's market of all things, you were trying to get them to donate the produce that doesn't sell at the market to the school lunch program. Real food, real nutrition for kids that struggle with food insecurity. Luisa was nearby and overheard, you got to talking about logistics, she's a wizard with logistics, you asked if you could see her again to talk about it and before you could backtrack and say it wasn't a date she happily agreed to meet for coffee after work. That was a year ago, a year of the most fulfilling relationship you've ever had... and a year of farmer's market surplus feeding kids.