Manny Ruiz, 51, makes his living stretching leather over motorcycle seats for riders within a 100-mile radius of his small eastern Ohio town, and he’s stubborn to a fault. Four years out from his divorce, he still refuses to so much as grab coffee with anyone who’s even tangentially connected to his ex-wife Clara, a rule he set after she left him for a real estate agent he’d played rec league softball with for three seasons. He spends most Friday nights at the local VFW fish fry, eats two pieces of cod with extra tartar sauce, watches the cornhole tournament, and is usually home by 9 to tinker with the half-restored 1976 Electra Glide in his garage shop.
The September air has a sharp, apple-tinged bite to it on the night he meets Lena. He’s leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, one boot propped on the lower crossbeam, beer sweating in his left hand, half-eaten hush puppy in his right, when she trips over a stray cooler at his feet. Her hip slams hard into his side, her free hand flies out to grip his forearm to steady herself, and a dollop of tartar sauce from the plate she’s carrying smears across the cuff of his faded gray flannel, still crusted with upholstery glue from that afternoon’s work. He catches her elbow before she can face-plant into the gravel, keeps his touch light until she’s steady on her feet.
Her name’s Lena, she says, laughing so hard her eyes crinkle at the corners, streaks of silver glinting in her dark curly hair when she tosses her head to get a strand out of her face. She’s a travel nurse from Portland, in town for six weeks to help her grandma recover from hip replacement surgery, and she’s already walked into a screen door and tripped over a garden hose in the three days she’s been here. She wipes a smudge of fried batter off her jeans with the back of her hand, and Manny notices her nails are chipped, no polish, calluses at the tips from turning IV lines and gripping blood pressure cuffs.
The tightness in his chest hits when she mentions her grandma is Mabel Carter, Clara’s second cousin. His first instinct is to make an excuse, head for his pickup, cut the interaction off before it can go anywhere. He already can hear Clara’s screeching voice on the phone, calling him a creep, dragging his name through the dirt at the next family cookout. But Lena doesn’t seem to have a clue who he is, doesn’t mention Clara at all when she rambles about Mabel’s prize-winning peach pies and how she used to spend two weeks every summer here as a kid, chasing fireflies in Mabel’s backyard.
She sits down next to him on the picnic bench, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts to reach for a drink or swat a stray mosquito. The smell of vanilla lotion mixes with the heavy fried grease and charcoal smoke hanging over the parking lot, and Manny finds himself leaning in a little without meaning to, just to catch more of it. She asks what he does for work, and when he says he upholsters custom motorcycle seats, her face lights up. Her dad restored a 1978 Electra Glide before he passed, she says, she still has the old leather seat he stitched himself in a storage unit back in Oregon.
The back and forth feels easy, lighter than any conversation he’s had with a woman in years. She teases him about the neon “NO CLARA ALLOWED” sticker he has taped to the back of his phone case, and he doesn’t even bother lying about who it’s for, just snorts and says she’d understand if she ever met his ex. The VFW’s cover band launches into a rough, off-key version of Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” and she taps her boot against his under the table, her ankle brushing his calf every time she moves.
He’s torn so bad his jaw aches. Half of him is disgusted at the thought of entertaining anything with a woman tied to Clara’s side of the family, convinced it’ll only blow up in his face, start drama he doesn’t have the energy for. The other half is fixated on the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she laughs, the way her hand brushes his when she passes him an extra napkin, the fact that she didn’t even flinch when he mentioned his divorce, didn’t ask for all the messy details the way most women in town do.
She leans in closer when the band gets too loud to talk over, her shoulder pressed firm against his, breath warm against his ear when she says she hasn’t spoken to Clara in 12 years, not since Clara stole her prom date senior year. She doesn’t care about old family drama, she says, she saw him leaning against the picnic table when she walked in 20 minutes earlier, thought he was the hottest guy at the fry, and almost didn’t come over until she tripped over that stupid cooler.
The resistance in Manny’s chest melts so fast he almost laughs. He’s spent four years letting Clara’s ghost dictate who he can talk to, who he can spend time with, and for what? She’s living in a new subdivision 45 minutes away, married to the real estate guy, hasn’t spoken to him in two years outside of court-ordered alimony emails. He asks her if she wants to head out to his shop after this, show her the 1976 Electra Glide he’s reupholstering for a guy in Pittsburgh, stop for a chocolate milkshake at the 24-hour diner on Main Street on the way back.
She grins, wipes the leftover tartar sauce off his flannel cuff with a napkin, her thumb brushing his wrist for half a second longer than necessary. He crumples up his empty paper plate, tosses it in the rusted metal trash can by the table, holds out his hand to help her off the bench. The band switches to a slow Johnny Cash track, couples swaying near the makeshift stage, wood smoke curling up from the fire pit at the far end of the parking lot to mix with the star-pricked dark. She laces her fingers through his, her palm warm even through the thick, leather-stained calluses on his hands. He leads her toward his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 parked at the edge of the lot, already mentally clearing the pile of scrap leather off the shop couch so they can sit after he shows her the bike.
