Javier Ruiz, 53, spent the four years since his wife left him sticking to a rigid, low-stakes routine: up at 6 to run the trails behind his Flagstaff home, 8 hours a day restoring vintage 4x4s out of his cinder block garage, dinner alone with a western movie and a cold IPA, bed by 10. His biggest personality flaw, if you asked his little sister, was that he’d built a wall so high between himself and the rest of the world he couldn’t even see over it to spot a good thing when it was two feet away. She’d badgered him for three weeks to come to the annual county chili cookoff, saying he’d been holed up long enough, and he’d finally caved just to get her to stop texting him meme after meme of grumpy old men alone in their garages.
He was leaning against the bumper of his 1983 F-150, picking at a bowl of green chili that burned so good it made his eyes water, when he saw her. Lila Marlow, 49, part-time Coconino National Forest ranger, ex-wife of his old wildland fire crew buddy Mike, who’d moved to Wyoming 8 months prior after their divorce was finalized. Javier had spent 12 years working side by side with Mike, and for all 12 of those years, he’d written Lila off as strictly off limits, even when she’d brought the crew cold beer after 36 hour shifts, even when she’d sat with him in the ER after he’d broken his ankle falling off a fire line, even when Mike would brag to the crew about how he was “bored” with married life.
She was carrying a stack of 50 paper plates, hurrying toward the booth for the junior ranger fundraiser she was running, when her boot caught on a loose cooler cord. She stumbled forward, and Javier moved before he thought, catching her upper arm to steady her. Her skin was warm through the thin fabric of her forest service uniform shirt, and she smelled like pine sap and ground cinnamon, like she’d been hiking and baking churros back to back. She laughed, a low, throaty sound he remembered from crew cookouts, and brushed a strand of dark, gray-streaked hair out of her face, her hazel eyes locking onto his for two full beats longer than polite small talk required. “Well, look who finally dragged himself out of the garage,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she was teasing or genuinely glad to see him.
She insisted he come over to her booth to try her homemade habanero salsa, and he followed, his boots crunching on the gravel parking lot, ignoring the way his old crew buddies who were manning the next booth over wolf-whistled under their breath. She leaned against the edge of the folding table as she handed him a small plastic cup of salsa, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he could smell vanilla lip balm when she tilted her head up to talk to him over the noise of the crowd. She mentioned she’d inherited a 1978 Ford Bronco from her dad a year prior, that it had been sitting in her driveway dead for months, that everyone she’d asked to look at it had quoted her an absurd amount of money. “I know you work on those old Fords,” she said, her fingers brushing the back of his hand when she passed him a tortilla chip to dip in the salsa. “Would you take a look at it for me? I’ll pay you in beer and those chocolate chip cookies you like, the ones I brought to the crew holiday parties every year.”
He almost said no. Almost. He’d spent four years turning down every invitation that didn’t involve his garage or his trails, spent four years telling himself getting close to anyone only ended with someone leaving, spent four years feeling like making a move on Lila would be some kind of betrayal of a friendship that Mike had already thrown away the second he’d left her for a 28 year old raft guide he’d met on a fishing trip. But she was looking up at him, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth just a little, and he found himself nodding before he could overthink it.
She showed up at his garage the following Saturday at 9 a.m., the Bronco sputtering into his driveway trailing a cloud of black exhaust, a 12 pack of his favorite IPA in the passenger seat and a Tupperware of chocolate chip cookies on the dash. They spent three hours leaning over the engine, him walking her through the busted carburetor that was the problem, her passing him wrenches and rags when he asked for them. At one point, she leaned over his shoulder to get a better look at the part he was pointing to, her hair falling against the back of his neck, and he froze, his grip tightening on the screwdriver he was holding. “I liked you, you know,” she said, quiet enough that he almost didn’t hear it over the Johnny Cash song playing low on the garage radio. “Even when I was with Mike. You were always the guy who showed up, no questions, no fanfare. I waited for you to say something for years, but you never did.”
He turned to face her, their faces only inches apart, the smell of motor oil and her pine soap mixing in the warm garage air. He told her he’d wanted to, that he’d thought it was wrong, that he’d spent years feeling guilty for even looking at her too long, that he’d convinced himself he didn’t deserve anything good after his wife left. She smiled, and brought her hand up to brush a smudge of grease off his cheek, her thumb lingering on his jaw for a second before she leaned in to kiss him. It was slow, unrushed, no messy fumbling, no awkward first kiss nerves, just two people who’d been circling each other for a decade finally stopping to admit what they’d both known for years.
They pulled apart when a neighbor’s dog started barking out by the road, and he laughed, a real, loud laugh he hadn’t let out in years. He grabbed two beers from the fridge by the garage door, and they sat on the tailgate of his F-150, watching the sun paint the San Francisco Peaks pink and orange as it dipped below the horizon. They didn’t make any big plans, didn’t talk about moving in or meeting family or any of the stuff that used to make Javier’s chest tight with anxiety. They just talked about the Bronco, about the trails she was mapping for the junior ranger program, about the old fire crew stories he hadn’t thought about in years. He twisted the cap off her cold IPA, passed it to her, and for the first time in as long as he can remember, he didn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave early.
