Manny Ruiz, 53, has restored vintage pinball machines out of his converted Asheville garage for 18 years, and he’d rather spend 12 hours soldering a broken flipper coil than navigate 10 minutes of small talk with a stranger. That’s the flaw he’s made peace with, mostly, ever since his wife packed her bags and moved to Portland seven years ago, leaving nothing but a half-empty bottle of pinot noir and a note saying he cared more about a 1978 Space Invaders cabinet than he did her. She wasn’t wrong, not entirely, so he didn’t fight it. He stopped going to neighborhood cookouts, skipped the annual street fair every year, stuck to pickup orders at the grocery store at 7 a.m. when no one else was around. He’d convinced himself he was fine with the quiet.
The only reason he showed up to the street fair on that sticky July Saturday was to pick up a custom walnut backglass frame from the woodworker who sets up a booth near the entrance. The crowd pressed in around him, kids screaming chasing bubble machines, the bluegrass band at the far end of the block plucking a fast version of Rocky Top, the thick smell of fried oreos and grilled corn sticking to the back of his throat. He grabbed the frame, paid the guy, turned to leave, and his elbow clipped a stack of pickle jars on the booth next door.
He grabbed the top jar before it hit the dirt, his calloused palm wrapping around the cold glass at the same time her hand did. Her fingers were cool, sticky with brine, a thin callus running along the side of her thumb from screwing jar lids shut 12 hours a day. He looked up, and his throat went dry. She was wearing a faded 1995 Tom Petty tour shirt, cut off at the elbows, a smudge of dill on her left jaw, silver hoop earrings glinting in the sun. He recognized her immediately: Lila Marlow, married to Jax Teller in high school, the same Jax who tripped him at the 1988 homecoming dance so he face-planted into a bowl of punch in front of the whole senior class. He’d had a crush on her for two years before that, never said a word.
Her grin crinkled the corners of her hazel eyes, and she didn’t pull her hand away for three full beats, longer than polite, longer than he expected. “Nice reflexes,” she said, nodding at the jar of garlic dill he was still holding. “Most guys would let it shatter and bolt before I could ask for a replacement.” The crowd pressed closer, a group of teens pushing past to get to the beer garden, so she stepped in toward him, her shoulder brushing his bicep, the faint smell of lavender laundry detergent and pickling vinegar wrapping around him, cutting through the fried food stench.
His first instinct was to mumble an apology, hand her the jar, and hightail it back to his truck. He’d avoided any kind of casual flirtation for six years, convinced he was too old, too set in his weird pinball nerd routine, too bitter to bother with whatever this was. But she was still looking at him, head tilted, like she was waiting for him to say something other than sorry. “You make these?” he asked, nodding at the rows of jars lined up on the booth, labels handwritten in curly blue ink.
“Sure do. Ferment everything in my basement. Garlic dill, bread and butter, spicy habanero, even a weird experimental batch with blueberries that’s way better than it sounds.” She popped the lid off the jar he’d caught, speared a dill spear with a wooden pick, held it out to him. His fingers brushed hers again when he took it, and he felt heat crawl up the back of his neck, the same stupid flutter he’d felt when he saw her in the high school hallway 35 years earlier. The pickle was crisp, salty, just garlicky enough, and he nodded, impressed.
“I remember you,” she said, before he could say anything else. “Manny, right? You used to fix pinball machines out of your parents’ garage back in high school. Jax used to make fun of you for it, said it was loser nerd stuff. I always thought it was cool. Told him he was an idiot for tripping you at homecoming, by the way. Divorced his ass 10 years ago, for the record.” She leaned against the booth, crossing her arms, and he laughed, surprised, the tension in his shoulders melting a little.
He told her he still fixes pinball machines, runs the shop out of his garage now, has 12 fully functional cabinets set up in the back for when he wants to blow off steam. She raised an eyebrow, sipping from a plastic water bottle, her gaze lingering on his arms, where he had a tiny tattoo of a pinball flipper on his left wrist. “You gonna invite me over to play sometime?” she asked, no hesitation, no awkward beating around the bush, and he blinked, stunned, for half a second.
He almost said no, almost made up some excuse about being busy with a big order for a collector in Texas, almost fell back into the routine of shutting people out. But then she smiled again, that same wide, crinkly-eyed grin, and he thought about how quiet his house was, how he only ever talked to people on the phone for work, how he hadn’t laughed that easy in years. “I close up the shop at 6,” he said. “If you bring a couple jars of that blueberry pickle garbage, I’ll crack open a six pack of the local IPA I keep in the mini fridge. We can play Centipede. I still have the high score, for now.”
She pulled her phone out, typed her number into his contacts, sent herself a text so she had his, then grabbed a jar of the blueberry pickles and a jar of the garlic dill, shoving them into a paper bag and pressing it into his hands. “Don’t go wiping the high score before I get there,” she said, and winked, before a group of customers crowded up to the booth asking for samples.
He walked back to his truck, the wood frame slung over his shoulder, the bag of pickles in his other hand, the sun warm on his face. He’d planned to spend the rest of the day soldering the Space Invaders flipper, ordering takeout Thai, and watching old westerns alone. Instead, he unlocked the truck, tossed the pickles in the passenger seat, and pulled out his phone to text his buddy who was supposed to come over to help with the repair that he’d have to reschedule. He flipped the key in the ignition, the radio cutting on to a Tom Petty track, and he grinned, so wide his cheeks hurt.
