Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living fixing dead arcade cabinets for bars and private collectors across northern Ohio, and he’s spent the last eight years post-divorce shutting down every casual advance that comes his way. His go-to excuse is that he’s too busy sourcing 40-year-old joysticks or troubleshooting blown circuit boards, but the real flaw is he assumes anyone showing interest only wants free repairs or first dibs on the rare Pac-Man or Donkey Kong units he restores in his garage. He’d dragged his mint 1982 Pac-Man cabinet to the small town summer beer fest that weekend because the event organizer was an old high school buddy, not because he was looking to meet anyone.
He fumbled the rag, it dropped to the sawdust-covered ground, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, the sound sharp and familiar over the band. She dropped a quarter into the slot without asking, leaned over the cabinet, and he tried not to stare at the freckles splayed across her shoulders as she maneuvered the joystick. It took her three lives to beat his high score, the screen flashing “NEW TOP PLAYER: LIL” in bright neon pink, and he gaped at her, teasing that she’d definitely memorized the ghost patterns back when she was sneaking into his garage. She leaned in again to respond, this time her hair brushing his cheek, and he caught the faint tang of mango seltzer on her breath. He tensed up immediately, half-disgusted with himself for even noticing how warm her skin was, half-giddy in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager. This was off-limits, his brain screamed, ex-wife’s family, people he’d known for 30 years would see them hanging around the booth and run their mouths.
He kept trying to put distance between them, stepping back to help a kid insert a quarter, wiping down the machine three more times for no reason, but she didn’t leave. She sat on the folding chair he’d dragged out for himself, shifting every few minutes so her bare knee knocked against his worn denim, asking questions about his repair business, laughing at his stupid jokes about people who tried to fix circuit boards with duct tape. He kept waiting for her to ask for a free fix for the old Donkey Kong Jr. unit he knew her brother owned, but she never did. She just kept leaning in, holding eye contact longer than she needed to, grinning when he stumbled over his words talking about a rare Asteroids cabinet he’d tracked down in a moldy barn last winter.
He grabbed his keys off the folding table, nodded toward the parking lot, and she followed him, both of them running through the rain laughing so hard they could barely breathe. His old Ford pickup smelled like pine air freshener and old circuit board solder, and he twisted the key to turn the heat on to dry them off. When he pulled his hand back from the dash, it rested on her thigh for a beat, and she didn’t move it, just laced her fingers through his, her palm warm even through his wet jeans. The radio flipped to an old 90s Keith Sweat track, the rain tapping hard against the windshield, and he turned to look at her, her makeup smudged a little from the rain, grinning like she knew exactly what he was thinking. He squeezed her hand, leaned across the center console to kiss her, the taste of mango seltzer and jasmine still sharp on her lips.
