Manny Ruiz, 62, spent 38 years installing and repairing commercial walk-in fridges for grocery stores across northern Ohio before he retired three years back. These days he only takes side gigs fixing vintage soda machines for small diners and county events, a hobby he’d hidden from his late wife Linda for most of their marriage because she’d tease him for spending more time polishing chrome dials than fixing the leaky kitchen faucet. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud to anyone but his old work buddy Joe, is that he’s spent the eight years since Linda passed deliberately shutting down any hint of romantic interest from the women in his small town, convinced even a coffee date would be a betrayal of the 32 years they’d built together.
He’d volunteered to set up his fully restored 1962 Coca-Cola machine at the county fair’s food court for free this year, a small tribute to Linda, who’d entered her famous peach pie in the fair’s baking contest every year until her chemo made her too tired to stand at the counter. The July humidity hung so thick he could taste it when he hauled the 300-pound machine off his pickup bed, his faded Tigers tee sticking to his shoulders, work boots crunching over sawdust scattered across the fairgrounds. He misjudged the turn when he wheeled it to his assigned spot, knocking a crate of ripe peaches off the edge of the adjacent pie stand, the fruit rolling across the dirt in all directions.
Clara Bennett, 58, the woman running the stand, didn’t yell. She just laughed, a low, throaty sound he recognized from all the church potlucks and Linda’s birthday parties they’d both attended over the years, and knelt down to grab the peaches before they got covered in mud. He dropped to his knees beside her, their hands brushing when they both reached for the same sun-warmed peach, juice leaking a little over his calloused knuckles. He’d never been this close to her before, noticed the tiny peach tattoo on her left wrist, silver hoop earrings glinting in the sun, a smudge of flour on her jawline. He apologized three times, offered to pay for the damaged fruit, but she waved him off, said peaches grew on trees, no harm done.
He worked slow on setting up the machine after that, stealing glances at her while she stacked pie tins and handed slices to fairgoers. She brought him a warm slice of peach pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream an hour later, sliding into the folding chair across from him when he took a break. Their knees bumped under the tiny table, and he felt a jolt go up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager taking Linda to her first high school dance. He fought the urge to lean in, berating himself silently for even looking at her that way—she’d been Linda’s baking partner for 15 years, for Christ’s sake, this was wrong, he was a terrible husband for even thinking it. But when she told him she’d gotten the peach tattoo six months after her own husband passed, something silly just for her that no one else got to judge, he felt the tightness in his chest loosen a little.
A sudden thunderstorm rolled through at dusk, sending fairgoers running for cover, the pop-up tents flapping in the wind. They huddled under the overhang of her pie stand, rain lashing down so hard it drowned out the sound of the country band playing at the other end of the grounds. She was shivering a little, the short sleeve of her gingham shirt soaked through, so he grabbed the worn work flannel he’d draped over the soda machine and handed it to her. She slipped it on, leaning in for half a second to sniff the collar, and said it smelled like machine oil and lemon Pledge, just like her dad’s work clothes when she was a kid. He reached out without thinking, brushing a strand of wet hair off her forehead, his thumb grazing her cheek. They held eye contact for ten full seconds, no one looking away, and he didn’t overthink it, just leaned in and kissed her, soft, her lips tasting like cinnamon and peach. She kissed him back, one hand resting lightly on his chest, and he didn’t feel guilty, not for a second.
The rain let up an hour later, the fair lights flickering back on, crickets chirping loud in the damp grass. He helped her pack up the leftover pies, loading the unsold crates into the back of her Subaru. She handed him a whole frozen pie before he climbed into his pickup, scrawled her cell number across the foil top in bright blue Sharpie, said she expected him to call before the weekend so they could test out a new pie recipe together. He set the pie on the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition, and tapped the scrawled number twice with his thumb before he pulled out of the fairgrounds parking lot.
