Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage neon signs across central Texas, and he’s stubborn enough to climb a 12-foot ladder on a bum left knee rather than call the fair organizer and admit he needs an extra pair of hands. He’d buried his wife six years prior after a short fight with pancreatic cancer, and somewhere in the haze of grief he’d decided asking for help, or letting anyone get close enough to offer it, was a betrayal of the 22 years they’d spent building their business together. The 1972 Ferris Wheel sign he’s here to fix has three dead tubes, a wonky transformer, and the fair’s opening in two hours, the air thick with the smell of fried dough and cotton candy that’s been hanging over the fairgrounds since dawn, and his knee is throbbing so bad he can feel his pulse in the joint through his work boot.
The first time he notices her, she’s standing at the base of the ladder holding a sweating mason jar of pink lemonade, the sun gilding the streaks of silver in her auburn hair where it’s pulled back in a messy braid. She’s wearing a faded 1990 Willie Nelson cutoff tee, jeans dusted with flour at the knees, and scuffed work boots caked in mud from the fairgrounds. “Marge sent me,” she calls up, nodding at the fair’s events coordinator. “Said you haven’t stopped to drink anything since you showed up at 7 a.m.” Her name is Clara, he remembers, runs the peach pie booth at the far end of the midway, the one the local church ladies gossip about nonstop because she left a six-figure corporate job in Dallas and a husband of 15 years to move to their tiny town 18 months prior. The rumor mill calls her a man-eater, a drifter, bad news for the quiet, widowed guys who’ve been sniffing around her booth since she set up shop.
He climbs down slow, his knee screaming halfway, and his boot slips on the last rung. He reaches out instinctively to steady himself, his calloused, neon-grease-streaked hand brushing the soft skin of her neck before he lands on the ground, and she doesn’t flinch. She just wraps a hand around his elbow, firm, no pity, until he’s steady on his feet. The lemonade is cold enough to make his teeth ache when he takes a sip, sweet with just the right amount of tart, and when he sits on the splintered picnic table bench to catch his breath, she sits across from him, her knee brushing his under the table through the thin fabric of his work pants. He should move. He should tell her he’s fine, he’s got the sign handled, thank her for the lemonade and send her back to her booth. But she’s talking about how her dad used to fix old neon signs for the drive-in movie theater outside Waco when she was a kid, and he finds himself leaning in, listening, instead of shutting her down.
When she offers to climb the ladder and hand him tools so he doesn’t have to go up and down every five minutes, he almost says no. The thought of being seen working that close with her, the church ladies whispering about him next Sunday at the grocery store, the little voice in his head screaming that he’s cheating on the wife he lost, makes his chest tight. But his knee throbs again, sharp, and he nods before he can talk himself out of it. She climbs the ladder like she’s been doing it her whole life, passes him wire cutters and new tube segments without him even having to ask, and every time their hands brush when he takes a tool from her, he feels a jolt go up his arm that has nothing to do with the live wires he’s handling. She leans in once to point out a loose connection he missed, her shoulder pressed warm against his, and he can smell cinnamon and peach and citrus on her, the same smell that drifts from her pie booth across the fairgrounds every summer.
They get the last tube screwed in right as the sun dips below the oak trees at the edge of the fairgrounds, and when he flips the switch, the sign blazes to life, hot pink and electric blue, the letters FERRIS WHEEL buzzing loud enough to hear over the distant sound of the crowd cheering as the rides open. He turns to look at her, and the neon light is painting pink streaks across her cheeks, and she’s grinning so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle, and for the first time in six years, he doesn’t overthink it. He leans in, kisses her slow, and she tastes like peach pie and iced tea, and the little voice in his head that’s been screaming about guilt and betrayal goes quiet for the first time since his wife took her last breath.
An hour later, they’re sitting on the hood of his beat-up 1998 Ford F150 parked at the edge of the fairgrounds, eating peach pie straight out of the tin with plastic forks, watching the Ferris wheel spin under the neon sign they fixed together. His knee still throbs a little, but it’s nothing compared to the warm weight of her leg pressed against his, the sound of her laugh when he makes a dumb joke about the terrible country cover band playing at the main stage. When she licks a smudge of pie filling off his jaw, he laughs so hard the crumbs in his mustache fall onto his flannel shirt.
