Manny Rios, 53, has spent the last eight years structuring his life to avoid surprises. As a mobile heavy equipment tire technician working construction sites across western Colorado, he’s on call 24/7, patches blowouts in 100-degree heat and blizzards alike, charges fair rates, and never stays for the post-job beer crews offer him. His only regular indulgence is the weekly draft at Buck’s Tavern, where he plays darts alone and ignores the single women who slide into the booth across from him. He hasn’t dated since his wife left him for a luxury real estate agent she met at a holiday party, convinced any new relationship comes with fine print he’s too tired to parse.
He freezes when he recognizes her. It’s Lena, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who used to bring homemade empanadas to their Super Bowl parties before the divorce. He hasn’t seen her in eight years, and he’s half tempted to turn and walk the other way before she spots him, small-town gossip is the last thing he needs to add to his already chaotic schedule. But she looks up before he can move, dark eyes locking onto his, and she smirks, leaning her elbows on the table so she’s closer to him, the sunflower tattoo on her wrist catching the light. She smells like lime and coconut sunscreen, no heavy perfume, the same scent he remembers from the time she helped them move into their old house back in 2012.
She teases him first, says she’d know that beat-up pair of steel toe boots anywhere, scuffs on the toe from when he dropped a tire iron on them during a camping trip years back. He laughs, surprised she remembers, leans against the edge of the booth so their knees are almost touching under the table, the denim of his work jeans brushing the hem of her cutoff shorts when she shifts to grab a napkin for a customer. He’s torn, half of him thrumming at the way she’s looking at him like he’s not just the guy her cousin left, the other half twisted up with the quiet guilt of even talking to her, the unspoken small-town rule that you don’t mess with your ex’s family.
But she doesn’t bring up his ex once. She asks about his rescue pit bull, Max, the one he posts about on the town Facebook group when he finds him curled up on the seat of his work truck after long shifts. She asks about the time he patched a grandma’s flat tire on the side of the county road for free last winter, says the whole town was talking about it. When he reaches across the table to grab a sample chip, their fingers brush, and she doesn’t pull away, holds the contact for a beat longer than necessary, her nails painted a chipped bright red, calloused at the edges from working in her garden.
He stays at the booth for 40 minutes, ignores the texts from his buddy asking where he went, trades stories about bad construction jobs and the time her tomato plants got eaten by deer last summer. When the line for salsa gets too long, she pulls a jar of her spiciest habanero salsa off the shelf behind her, tucks a slip of scrap paper under the lid before she hands it to him, her knuckles brushing his palm when he takes it. She says her old Ford F-150 has a slow leak in the rear passenger tire, she was gonna call a random tech from the phone book, but she’d rather have him come by her place tomorrow afternoon, no rush, no charge if he brings his dog along.
He hesitates for three full seconds, the voice in the back of his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that his ex will hear about it, that it’ll start drama he doesn’t have the energy for. But then he looks at her, the sun catching the gray strands in her dark hair, the way she’s smiling like she already knows he’ll say yes, and he tucks the jar into his cooler, nods, says he’ll be there by 2.
