Manny Ruiz, 52, runs a one-man vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of his Dripping Springs, Texas garage, has avoided anything tied to his ex-wife’s side of the family since she left him for a Harley parts salesman eight years prior. His worst flaw is his default suspicion; he assumes anyone who shows more than passing interest in him either wants a discounted bike fix or to siphon from his quiet retirement savings, so he keeps conversations short, sticks to the regulars at the weekly bike meets, and hasn’t brought anyone back to his house in seven years.
He’s wiping the last of the custom clear coat off his fully restored 1978 Kawasaki KZ650 when she walks up, holding a paper plate stacked with brisket and pickles, a spiked seltzer tucked in the crook of her other arm. The late April sun is low, gilding the edges of her wavy dark hair, and he freezes mid-wipe when he recognizes the scar snaking up her left wrist, the same one she’d told him she got crashing a moped in high school, at his wedding 22 years prior. She’s Elara, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the only person at that wedding who’d laughed when he spilled merlot down the front of her bridesmaid dress instead of yelling.
He tenses first, shoulders going tight, ready for a dig about how he’s still tinkering with old bikes while his ex is living in a lake house outside Dallas. Instead she grins, nods at the Kawasaki’s custom burnt orange paint, the same shade as the Texas Longhorns hoodie he’d worn to their wedding rehearsal. “I knew that tacky color had to be yours,” she says, leaning in to run a finger along the tank’s edge, her shoulder brushing his bicep. He can smell jasmine lotion and pine, sharp and bright, nothing like the vanilla perfume his ex used to douse herself in.
He doesn’t know what to say at first, so he just grunts, wipes his greasy hands on the leg of his worn denim overalls. She sits on the curb next to him, sets her plate down, and tells him she’s in town for her grandma’s funeral, flew in from Oregon where she’s been a backcountry park ranger for 16 years, got divorced three years prior when her ex left her for a hot yoga instructor half his age. He finds himself leaning in when she talks, listening, not waiting for the other shoe to drop like he usually does with strangers. She teases him about the merlot incident, says she still has that dress somewhere in a storage unit, the stain never came out.
When she finishes her brisket, he offers to buy her another seltzer, and they walk over to the beer tent, their hands brushing twice when they step around a group of teens running with snow cones. The crowd thins as the sun drops fully, the local cover band starting in on old Merle Haggard tracks, the air cooling enough that he can see his breath when he laughs at a story she tells about chasing a black bear off a campsite last winter. He usually leaves these shows by 7 to head home and rewatch old westerns, but he doesn’t check his watch once while she talks. They sit on a picnic bench tucked behind the port-a-potties, far enough from the main crowd that no one they know will spot them, and she tells him she’s thought about him off and on for years, that she always thought his ex was an idiot for leaving a guy who fixed things instead of just complaining about them.
His chest feels tight, like he’s holding his breath without realizing it. He’d spent eight years convincing himself anyone tied to his ex’s family was the enemy, that getting close to any of them would just lead to more mess, more disappointment, but when she reaches across the table to tap the faded wedding ring tattoo on his left ring finger, her skin warm against his, he doesn’t pull away. She says she never bought the story his ex told about him being distant, that she could see how he looked at her back then, like she hung the moon.
When the band starts playing a slow country track, she stands, holds out a hand. He shakes his head, says he doesn’t dance, hasn’t since the wedding. She laughs, the sound rough from years of yelling over mountain winds, and grabs his wrist, pulls him up. They sway off to the side of the dance floor, her hip pressed to his, his hand resting light on the small of her back, and he can feel the faint raised scar there she’d told him about at the wedding, from falling off a horse when she was 12. She leans up, her mouth close to his ear, and says she has a hotel room ten minutes away, and a photo album of the 1972 Yamaha she’s been trying to fix by herself for two years, if he wants to come take a look.
He hesitates for half a second, glances over at his truck parked by the entrance, thinks about the cold beer in his fridge, the quiet house waiting for him if he drives home alone. Then he nods, laces his fingers through hers, and follows her toward the rental truck she parked down the street. When she leans across the cab to open the passenger door for him, the faint scent of jasmine mixes with the cool night air, and he doesn’t even think to check his phone for messages before he climbs in.
