Javi Ruiz, 59, makes his living restoring antique maps of the American Southwest out of a converted garage behind his tiny adobe house in south Tucson. He’s held a self-imposed moratorium on any and all romantic or even casual connections since his wife left him for a Scottsdale real estate broker 12 years prior, convinced that anyone who shows interest in him either wants a discount on his work or is just bored enough to tease the quiet guy who keeps to himself. He only leaves the house for archival supply runs, the weekly summer farmers market where he sells his restored pieces, and his Friday night stop at the Sagebrush Tap for hot wings and a cold IPA.
Mid-July, the heat still hangs at 98 degrees at 7 p.m., the bar’s swamp cooler blowing air that smells like mildew and lemon Pledge. Javi slings his canvas work bag over the shoulder of his sun-faded denim shirt, wraps calloused, ink-stained fingers around a frosted pint, and stares at the condensation dripping down the glass to the sticky bar top. The vinyl stool next to him, which is almost always empty, scrapes back, and someone drops onto it hard enough to jostle his elbow. He doesn’t look up, already mentally drafting an excuse to move to a table if the stranger is chatty.
Then the margarita spills. Just a splash, neon green, hitting the edge of his canvas bag. “Oh shit, I am so sorry,” the woman says, reaching across him to grab a napkin from the dispenser by his elbow, her forearm brushing the hair on his, her wrist warm even through the thin denim. He flinches before he can stop himself, and she pulls back half an inch, holding her hands up like she’s approaching a skittish stray. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Lila. I run the mobile grooming van that was set up two stalls down from you today.”
He blinks, recognizes her then. She’s Manny’s little sister, Manny who owned the map shop he worked at when he first moved to Tucson, Manny who told him once when he’d offhandedly mentioned she was pretty that she didn’t date guys more than three years older than her, that she thought older men were “stuck in their boring, set-in-stone ruts.” He’s five years older than her, 59 to her 54, so that tracks. He looks down at the damp spot on his bag, then up at her. Her dark hair is pulled back in a messy braid streaked with silver at the temples, her nails are chipped pale blue, and she smells like coconut shampoo, lavender dog conditioner, and the tart lime from her margarita. She’s leaning in a good six inches closer than a stranger would, her eyes locked on his, no polite darting away, no awkward smile to disengage. “Javi,” he says, surprised his voice doesn’t crack, that he doesn’t immediately mumble an excuse to leave.
She laughs, a rough, warm sound, when he jokes that the only thing in the bag that would run is the half-empty pack of cherry Sour Patch Kids he keeps in the side pocket, that all the maps are sealed in plastic archival sleeves. When she laughs her shoulder presses into his bicep, firm and warm, and she doesn’t move away after. He’s torn, half of him screaming that this is a bad idea, that Manny would lose his mind if he saw them, that he’s just setting himself up for embarrassment when she remembers he’s exactly the boring old guy Manny warned her about. The other half buzzes, hyper aware of every point of contact, every time her knee brushes his under the bar, every time her eyes crinkle at the corners when he tells a story about a guy who tried to bring him a gas station print of an 1880s Arizona map claiming it was a family heirloom worth five grand.
He hasn’t felt this light in years, hasn’t had anyone listen to him ramble about cotton rag map paper grades or watermark dating like it’s actually interesting, not just a weird niche hobby. She tells him about the 12-year-old golden retriever she groomed that day that kept trying to steal her scrunchies, about the prickly pear cactus she’s been trying to keep alive on her porch for three years that still hasn’t bloomed, and he finds himself leaning in too, closing the gap between them until their arms are pressed together from elbow to wrist.
The bar starts to empty out, the bartender flipping off the neon Coors sign above the taps as he wipes them down for the night, and she pushes her empty margarita glass to the side, tilting her head at him. Her voice drops a little, so only he can hear it over the hum of the cooler. “I have a 1952 Sonoran Desert survey map my dad left me when he died. It’s got a three-inch tear along the Colorado River line, I’ve been trying to find someone to fix it right for years. Wanna come back to my place to look at it? I’ve got cold lager in the fridge, and a porch with a view of the Santa Ritas that doesn’t suck.”
He freezes, his fingers wrapped around his nearly empty pint, his mind racing. He could say no. He could make an excuse that he has work to do early tomorrow, that he’s tired, that he doesn’t want to drive across town. He could go home to his quiet adobe, his half-finished 1890s New Mexico territory map restoration, his cat that only likes him when he’s giving her tuna treats, and forget this ever happened. But then he looks at her, at the way she’s biting her lower lip just a little like she’s nervous he’ll say no, at the silver streak in her braid catching the remaining neon glow from the jukebox, and he nods before he can overthink it.
They walk out to her beat-up silver pickup, the asphalt still warm enough to seep through the soles of his scuffed work boots, crickets chirping loud in the sagebrush lining the parking lot. When she pulls open the passenger door for him, her hand brushes his, and this time he doesn’t flinch, he lets his fingers linger against hers for half a second, calloused to calloused, before he climbs in. She turns the key, the radio crackles to life playing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” and she grins over at him as she pulls out of the parking lot, the warm desert wind blowing her braid over her shoulder. He leans back, rests his arm on the open window, and watches the saguaro cacti blur past under the pink and orange streaks of the fading sunset.
