Manny Ruiz, 53, has built his vintage motorcycle restoration business on reliability and strict boundaries. He works 12-hour days out of a converted cinder block garage outside Nederland, Colorado, turns down clients he suspects will be high maintenance, and has skipped every town community event for the last six years until his only part-time employee practically shoved him out the door to attend the annual fall chili cookoff. He’s leaning against the tank of his freshly restored 1978 Ironhead, grease still crusted under the edges of his fingernails, a paper bowl of overcooked fire department chili in one hand, when someone’s shoulder brushes his hard enough to slosh a dollop of beans onto his scuffed Carhartt sleeve. He’s ready to snap a gruff apology before he even looks down, then he freezes.
It’s Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger sister. He hasn’t seen her in seven years, not since she drove back to Oregon three days after he signed his divorce papers. Her dark hair is braided down her back, a smudge of cinnamon on her upper lip from the churro she’s holding, and she smells like lavender laundry detergent and pine, the latter he assumes comes from her job as a backcountry forest ranger outside Bend. She smirks, holding his eye contact longer than is strictly polite, and nods at the Ironhead behind him. “Knew that paint job was yours. No one else within 100 miles wastes three weeks wet sanding a tank just for the shine.”
He huffs a rough, rare laugh, wiping the chili off his sleeve with the back of his hand. They dance around the obvious at first, trading small talk about her mom’s recent knee replacement, the vintage CB350 he’s restoring for a client in Chicago, the record-breaking number of aspen trees turning gold that fall. She steps closer as they talk, close enough that he can feel the heat off her forearm when she gestures at a group of kids chasing a dog across the park, and he has to fight the instinct to step back. He’s spent seven years intentionally walling himself off from any connection that could turn into small town gossip, and dating his ex-wife’s sister is the kind of thing the town’s gossips would talk about for a decade. The guilt nags at him, sharp and cold, even as he can’t look away from the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she laughs.
When she hands him a cold hard cider she grabbed from the drink booth, their fingers brush for three full seconds. His are calloused, scarred across the knuckles from a 2019 dirt bike crash, hers are softer but nicked with a thin scar along the index finger from a chainsaw accident the previous spring, she told him. The jolt that travels up his arm is so sharp he almost drops the cider. She doesn’t pull away immediately, just holds his gaze, and says quiet enough no one else can hear, “My sister never deserved you. I told her that the week she left for that developer in Denver.”
That’s the last of his resistance crumbling. He nods at the Harley, the engine still warm from his drive into town, and asks if she wants to ride up to the valley overlook. The leaves are at peak color, he says, you can see all the way to the Continental Divide from the top. She doesn’t hesitate, grinning so wide her dimples show, and says she’s been waiting 23 years for him to ask her that. He hands her the dented spare helmet he keeps strapped to the back fender, holds out his arm to steady her when she swings her leg over the seat behind him. Her arms wrap tight around his waist, her chest pressed warm to his back, her cheek resting against his shoulder, and he can feel her laugh through the thin fabric of his flannel when he accelerates a little faster than necessary pulling out onto the highway.
He cuts the engine ten minutes later when they reach the overlook, the only sounds left the wind rustling gold aspen leaves and the distant gurgle of a stream down the mountain. She doesn’t let go of his waist for a full minute, just sits pressed against him, before she leans around, tilts his jaw toward her with one cool hand, and kisses him. She tastes like peppermint gum and hard cider and cinnamon, her fingers tangled in the graying hair at the nape of his neck, and he kisses her back without overthinking it, no guilt, no worry about gossip, no stupid rules he made for himself to avoid getting hurt. When she pulls back to grin at him, her cheeks pink from the mountain wind, he doesn’t even pretend he’s not going to ask her to stay the night.
