Javi Mendez, 57, spends 60 hours a week sanding aluminum, patching floor rot, and rewiring vintage travel trailers out of a cinder block shop tucked between a hay field and a mobile home park 20 minutes south of Tucson. He hasn’t attended a community event since his wife packed her leather suitcase and drove north for a Scottsdale realtor eight years prior, so when his only employee and part-time fishing buddy dragged him to the quarterly food truck rally on the edge of town, he’d showed up in grease-stained Carhartt flannel, steel-toed boots, and a scowl he planned to keep glued on all night. He’d been three deep in the carnitas line for 12 minutes, mentally running through a list of frame welds he needed to finish on a 1957 Airstream the next day, when something cold and sweet sloshed across the toe of his left boot.
He looked down first, at the pale beige horchata dripping off the rubber toe cap, then up, and froze. It was Clara Ruiz, his next door neighbor of three months, the woman he’d only exchanged awkward over-the-fence waves with, the ex-wife of his former business partner, the guy he’d cut ties with 10 years prior after the man had embezzled $12,000 from their joint restoration fund and left Javi holding the bill for a botched custom job. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Tom Petty tee, and silver hoops that caught the pink and orange of the fading desert sunset, and she was already leaning down, dabbing at his boot with a crumpled napkin, her bare shoulder brushing the outside of his thigh when she lost her balance for half a second.
“I am so sorry,” she said, standing back up, and her voice was warmer than he remembered, softer than the gruff mumbles he’d heard her exchange with the mailman. Her eyes were dark, lined with faint smudges of charcoal, and she held his gaze for three full beats longer than a stranger would, long enough that he could smell coconut shampoo and the faint, smoky scent of the mesquite grill 10 feet away. She held out a second napkin, and when he reached for it, her fingers brushed the inside of his wrist, cold from holding her drink, and he felt a jolt go up his arm that had nothing to do with the half-drunk Modelo he’d finished 10 minutes earlier.
His first instinct was to mumble it’s fine, grab his taco order, and hightail it back to his shop, where the only people he had to talk to were his half-blind hound dog and the occasional customer dropping off a parts order. For 10 years he’d told himself even thinking about Clara was off limits, that she was his ex-partner’s wife first, even though they’d gotten divorced six years prior, even though he’d spent more time than he’d admit staring at the side of her house over his fence when he took smoke breaks, wondering what her laugh sounded like when she wasn’t yelling at her lazy lawn guy. He opened his mouth to make an excuse to leave, but the taco truck attendant called his name, and when he turned back around, she was holding two extra bags of chips, tilting her head toward a half-empty picnic table at the edge of the crowd. “I’ll buy you another horchata to make up for it,” she said, grinning, and he couldn’t think of a single reason to say no.
The crowd thinned out around them, the string lights strung above the food trucks flickered on, and when she leaned in to tell him about how her ex-husband had always lied to customers about who did the actual restoration work, how she’d known Javi was the one putting in 14 hour days to fix his mistakes, her hand landed on his knee, warm and firm, for three slow beats before she pulled it back like she hadn’t even realized she’d done it. He didn’t overthink it. He’d spent 8 years overthinking every small choice, every potential connection, talking himself out of anything that didn’t involve trailer frames and welding torches, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t listen to the voice in his head telling him to run. He reached across the gap between them, laced his calloused, grease-stained fingers through hers, and she didn’t pull away. She squeezed his hand once, soft, and smiled, the corner of her mouth tucked up like she’d been waiting for him to do it.
They finished their tacos, threw their empty napkins in the trash can by the table, and he offered to walk her home, even though her house was only three doors down from his. The desert air had cooled off, crickets were chirping in the scrub brush on the side of the road, and they didn’t let go of each other’s hands the whole walk. When they got to her front porch, she dug her keys out of her purse, and tilted her head up at him, asking if he wanted to come in for a cold beer, that she had a stack of photos of the Scotty she wanted to show him. He nodded, and she laughed, turning to fumble with her lock. He wiped a smudge of al pastor sauce from the corner of her mouth with his thumb before she turns the key in the lock.
