Manny Ruiz, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, had spent the three years since his wife’s cancer death holed up in his garage, sanding walnut and maple into custom cutting boards for local coffee shops and farmers’ market regulars. He’d avoided every neighborhood event in that stretch, too guilty to laugh or make small talk like the world hadn’t tilted off its axis the day Lori took her last breath. The HOA had finally strong-armed him into manning the main grill for the end-of-summer block party, threatening a $150 fine if he bailed, so he’d showed up in his cut-off Ohio State hoodie, charcoal smudge streaked across his left cheek, and resigned himself to four hours of burnt hot dogs and awkward small talk about his “cute little hobby.”
He’d noticed the new next door neighbor a week prior, when he’d hauled a stack of lumber out of his pickup at 7am and caught her kneeling in her front yard planting sunflowers, flowy white linen dress hitched up to her calves, silver streaks in her dark hair catching the sunrise, a thin scar slicing across her left eyebrow. He’d nodded, she’d waved, and he’d hustled into his garage before he could make a fool of himself stuttering through an introduction. He’d found out two days later from the guy who mows his lawn that she was Clara Henderson, 58, ex-wife of his old 10th grade football coach, the same man who’d benched him for an entire season after he skipped practice to enter a regional woodworking competition, growling that he’d be “flipping burgers for minimum wage the rest of his life” if he kept wasting time on “stupid little carvings.”
The irony wasn’t lost on him when she wandered over to the grill an hour into the party, lime seltzer in one hand, neon pink paper plate in the other, leaning in close enough that her bare shoulder brushed the tattoo of a chisel he had on his bicep. He could smell jasmine lotion and the faint tang of cherry vape on her breath, and he tensed up immediately, half waiting for her to snap at him for burning the turkey burgers, the way her ex-husband used to snap at him for missing a block.
“One of the other guys said you’re the only one who knows which patties are the vegan ones,” she said, nodding at the stack of frozen patties next to the grill, and her laugh was crinkly, warm, nothing like the sharp barks he remembered from Coach Henderson’s sidelines. He fumbled for the correct package, handed her a patty, and when their fingers brushed, his ears went hot, the way they used to when he was 17 and got caught passing notes in class.
He expected her to leave after that, but she leaned against the fence next to him, sipping her seltzer, asking about the calluses on his hands, about the cutting board business he’d mentioned to the HOA president a week prior. He told her about Lori, how she’d been the one who pushed him to sell his work after he retired, how she’d set up his first farmers’ market booth while he was still panicking that no one would buy anything. Clara nodded, told him she’d left Coach Henderson after 36 years of marriage when she caught him cheating with his secretary, that she’d moved to Ohio from Austin to get as far away from him as possible, that she’d always hated how he talked down to kids who didn’t care about football.
The sharp, knee-jerk disgust he’d felt at the thought of being anywhere near his old coach’s wife faded fast, replaced by a warm, thrumming curiosity he hadn’t felt since Lori was alive. They talked through the rest of the party, her stepping closer every time a group of kids ran past screaming, their knees brushing when they both leaned in to watch a golden retriever steal a hot dog off a kid’s plate. She touched his forearm when he made a joke about the HOA president’s lumpy potato salad, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his hoodie, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, didn’t make an excuse to leave.
By the time the sun dipped below the oak trees at the end of the block, most of the neighbors had packed up their coolers and headed home, leaving Manny and Clara alone to haul the leftover food and grill accessories back to his garage. She tripped over a coiled garden hose half way across his lawn, and he grabbed her waist to steady her, his hands splayed across the soft linen of her dress, their faces inches apart. He could taste the cherry seltzer on her breath when she exhaled, and for half a second he thought about pulling away, about telling her it was too soon, about how weird it was that she used to be married to the guy who made his 10th grade year a living hell.
Instead, he leaned in, and she tilted her chin up, and the kiss was slow, soft, no rush, the distant sound of a Cleveland Guardians game playing on a neighbor’s porch radio mixing with the chirp of crickets in the grass. He didn’t care that any of the remaining neighbors could see them, didn’t care that Coach Henderson would lose his mind if he found out, didn’t care that he’d spent three years convincing himself he’d never want to kiss anyone else ever again.
They stumbled into his garage a minute later, the air smelling like sawdust and lemon oil, and Clara ran her fingers over the half-finished walnut cutting board he’d been working on that morning, the one with the small groove carved around the edge for catching meat juice. “Can you carve a tiny sunflower in the corner for me?” she asked, tapping the edge of the slab, and he nodded, his throat too tight to speak. She pulled a pen out of her purse, scribbled her phone number on a scrap of 220 grit sandpaper, and tucked it into the pocket of his worn work jeans, her fingers brushing the waistband of his boxers for half a second, making him shiver.
“I’ve got a bottle of tempranillo in my fridge that’s supposed to pair really well with charcuterie,” she said, heading for the garage door, pausing to wink at him over her shoulder. “Bring the board over tomorrow around 7, yeah?”
He nodded again, watching her walk across the lawn to her house, the streetlight catching the silver streaks in her hair. He pulled the scrap of sandpaper out of his pocket, ran his thumb over the smudged numbers, the charcoal smudge still streaked across his cheek, the faint smell of jasmine still hanging in the garage air. He picked up his carving knife, ran his thumb over the rough outline of a sunflower he’d just scribbled on the edge of the walnut slab, already looking forward to the sound of her knock on his door the next afternoon.
