Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living sanding rust out of 1960s camper shells and patching leaky sealant in the cinder block bay he rents on the edge of Asheville. He hasn’t let anyone sleep in the spare bedroom of his bungalow since his wife left seven years prior, telling anyone who asks that he’s too busy picking caulk out of his cuticles to waste time on small talk and dinner dates. The only plans he keeps regular are Friday night fish fries at the local VFW, where he stashes a bottle of extra-hot habanero sauce in his cooler because the stuff the post serves tastes like watered down ketchup.
He’s leaning against a loblolly pine by the picnic tables, picking breading off a piece of fried catfish, when she steps into his orbit. She’s the new part-time librarian who moved to town three weeks prior, wears cut off jeans and faded band tees under her cardigans when she’s not behind the checkout desk, and she’s close enough that the jasmine of her shampoo mixes with the grease and charcoal smoke in the air. “Heard you’re the guy hoarding the good hot sauce,” she says, grinning, and her bare forearm brushes his when she leans in to nod at the cooler at his feet. He fumbles the latch when he reaches for it, knocks the bottle over, and a dollop of bright red sauce splatters right on the knee of her jeans.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, grabbing a crumpled napkin from his plate and dabbing at the stain before he thinks better of it. His knuckles brush the soft skin of her thigh for half a second, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot soldering iron, face hot. She laughs, not mean, just warm, and takes the napkin from him, dabbing at the spot herself. “Relax, I got these at the thrift store for three bucks. They’ve had worse.”
He hands her the hot sauce, and she stays there, leaning against the pine next to him, talking while they eat. She tells him she moved from Chicago to take care of her grandma who had a stroke, that she used to spend every summer in a beat up 1968 Shasta camper her grandma parked in the Smokies, that she misses the way the aluminum roof sounded when it rained. Manny blinks, because he’s halfway done restoring a 1968 Shasta in his shop right now, butter yellow paint, gingham curtains he found at a yard sale, a little two burner stove that works perfectly. He says so before he can stop himself, adds a stupid, offhand joke that he needs someone to test it out for a weekend, make sure the mattress doesn’t sag and the fridge gets cold enough for beer.
He expects her to laugh it off, but she leans in a little closer, eye contact steady, no trace of teasing. “When do we leave?”
The old panic hits him first, the sharp, familiar urge to make an excuse, say he was kidding, that he’s got too much work to do, that he doesn’t do weekend trips with near-strangers. That disgust he’s carried for years at the thought of being vulnerable, of letting someone see the mess of his life beyond the camper shells and the hot sauce, bubbles up for half a second, then fizzles out when she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smirks like she knows he’s overthinking it. “Tomorrow afternoon, if you’re free,” he says, before he can chicken out.
He picks her up at her grandma’s bungalow the next day, his beat up Ford F-150 idling in the driveway, and she climbs in with a duffel bag and a pack of store-bought chocolate chip cookies. The drive to the campground outside Cade’s Cove takes 45 minutes, and they don’t run out of things to talk about the whole way, bantering about bad library books and the worst camper restoration jobs he’s ever taken, the ones where the previous owner used duct tape to patch a hole in the roof and let a family of raccoons move into the cabinets.
He parks the camper in a spot tucked between two oak trees, and when he opens the door, she gasps, stepping up inside before he can warn her about the loose step by the door. He follows her in, and she turns around, reaches for his hand, laces her fingers through his before he can overthink it. The door clicks shut behind them, and the rain that was forecast hits the roof right then, soft, steady taps that drown out the sound of crickets and distant traffic. He’d spent the whole drive convincing himself he’d mess this up, that he was too rough, too quiet, too set in his ways for someone who spent all day reading poetry to retired folks at the library, but when her thumb brushes the callus on his index finger from holding a sanding block for hours on end, that last bit of resistance melts away.
He leans down, slow, so she can pull away if she wants, and she meets him halfway, her lips soft, tasting like peppermint gum and the lemonade she drank on the drive. Her other hand rests on his chest, right over his faded work t-shirt, and he can feel the heat of her palm through the fabric, steady, real, nothing like the lonely nights he’d spent watching old westerns on his couch alone for the last seven years. When they pull back, she grins, nods at the little window above the camper’s dinette, where a young buck is standing at the edge of the tree line, staring at them like it’s curious. He squeezes her hand, and she doesn’t let go.
