Manny Ruiz, 62, retired HVAC foreman, has avoided his neighborhood HOA’s annual fall fair for four years straight. His ex-wife used to drag him to the event, nagging him to wear a button-down instead of his work flannel and stop talking to the other guys about duct sizing and heat pump efficiency. He only agreed to set up a brisket booth this year because the HOA president owed him for fixing his pool heater for free mid-summer, when the Texas heat hit 107 for three weeks straight. Manny’s pop-up is a side gig he started after his wife left him in 2019, mostly for something to do, and he only advertises to a small Facebook group of local guys over 50 who grill. He’s got a scar snaking across his left forearm from a faulty duct that collapsed on him during a service call in 2015, and a permanent chip in his front tooth from a high school football game. His biggest flaw, one he’ll admit to only after three Shiner Bocks, is that he writes off every woman in his social circle as either aligned with his ex or looking for a free service call.
The fair is smaller than he remembers, the air thick with the smell of funnel cake and roasted corn, a mariachi band playing slow cumbias two booths over. His booth is wedged next to a table stacked with glass jars of peach salsa, run by Clara Bennett. He tenses when he sees her. 59, widowed three years, she was in his ex’s book club for 12 years, and the last time they spoke at his ex’s 55th birthday party, she’d made a snide comment about him having grease under his nails even to a formal dinner. He’d avoided her entirely ever since, crossing the street if he saw her walking her golden retriever, ignoring her waves at the grocery store.
She’s wearing faded jeans and a worn Texas A&M hoodie instead of the silk blouses he remembers from book club nights, her sun-bleached blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a streak of dirt across her left cheek. Half an hour after the fair opens, she walks over to his booth, holding an empty paper towel roll, and says her teen helper bailed that morning, and she just spilled an entire jar of mild salsa all over her table. He grabs the extra roll he keeps under his counter, hands it to her, and their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, calloused on the pads from chopping peppers, not soft and gel-manicured like his ex’s always were. She mumbles a thanks, and he notices her nail polish is chipped pale pink, half worn off.
He catches himself glancing over at her every few minutes through the day. She gives a fussy toddler a free sample of salsa after he drops his chip on the gravel, laughs so hard at a veteran’s story about eating peach salsa on MREs during the Gulf War that she snorts, helps an elderly woman carry her jar of salsa to her car. It’s nothing like the stuck-up, prissy woman he’d built up in his head. Around 3 p.m., the sky turns dark gray out of nowhere, wind gusting so hard it blows the plastic cover off his booth, sends a stack of paper plates flying into the parking lot. Clara scrambles to cover her jars of salsa, trips over a cooler sitting between their two booths, and he lunges, catching her around the waist before she hits the gravel. Her back presses to his chest for three full seconds, the scent of coconut sunscreen and roasted peach wrapping around him, her damp hair brushing his jaw. She gasps a little, her hand resting right on the scar across his forearm, before she steadies herself and mumbles a breathless thank you. They haul her boxes of jars and his trays of brisket under the community center awning while the rain pours down in thick, cold sheets.
They stand shoulder to shoulder watching the rain pelt the parking lot, and she says she’s sorry for that comment at his ex’s birthday party. She was drunk, his ex had been complaining for an hour about how he never wanted to go to fancy country club dinners, and she’d parroted the line to fit in, but she always thought it was stupid. She still has the AC unit he installed at her house in 2017, she says, it runs better than the brand new one her son paid three grand for last year. He laughs, admits he’s been avoiding her for three years because he thought she hated him. She snorts, says she’s been stopping by his pop-up once a month for six months, buying brisket tacos, he just never notices because he always has his head down wrapping orders.
The rain stops after 45 minutes, most of the other vendors already packed up and gone. Manny has half a tray of brisket left, and Clara pulls a six pack of Shiner Bock out of her cooler, says she brought it for her helper who never showed. They sit on the tailgate of his beat up 2006 F-150, passing beer back and forth, dipping slices of brisket into a jar of her extra spicy peach salsa. She teases him about the bumper sticker on his truck that reads “I Fix Stupid AC Mistakes” and he teases her about putting so much cilantro in her salsa it makes his eyes water. She reaches over, runs her thumb along the raised edge of the scar on his forearm, and asks how he got it. He tells her about the duct collapse, and she rolls up her jeans leg to show him a matching scar on her knee, from falling off a ladder picking peaches for her salsa last summer. She leans in a little as she talks, their shoulders pressed together, the sun breaking through the clouds gilding the ends of her hair.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his place, says he has a pot of pinto beans simmering on the stove and a porch swing he fixed last month that doesn’t squeak anymore. She grins, says only if he promises not to mention his ex the entire night. He laughs, grabs her box of leftover salsa jars, tosses it in the back of the truck next to his grill supplies. He opens the passenger door for her, and she swings herself up into the seat, her knee brushing his wrist as she settles, and he catches the faint sweet tang of peach on her breath when she leans over to turn up the old George Strait song playing on the radio.
