Rio Mendez, 53, has restored 117 vintage motorcycles in the 12 years he’s lived outside Knoxville, Tennessee, and he’s turned down almost as many first date offers in the 8 years since his wife packed her bags and left for a life selling farm equipment across the southeast. He’s stubborn to a fault, still holds a dumb, leftover grudge against librarians because his ex insisted they were all “stuck-up book snobs who hated fun”, and he only leaves his converted barn shop twice a week: once to get groceries, once to hit the VFW fish fry on Friday nights, where the beer is $2 a bottle and no one bugs him unless they need a carburetor rebuilt.
The July air is thick enough to drink when he pushes through the VFW screen door, fried catfish and vinegar coleslaw curling into his nose before he’s two steps inside. The jukebox is spitting Johnny Cash deep cuts, the plastic tablecloths are sticky with spilled sweet tea, and every table but the one he usually sits at is packed. He slides into his usual booth, pops the cap off a beer the bartender slides his way without asking, and is halfway through his first hushpuppy when a shadow falls across the table.
He looks up. It’s the new county librarian, the one half the old heads at the VFW have been ranting about for three weeks, ever since she got caught dropping off a stack of banned books at the local high school’s GSA club. She’s wearing faded cutoff jeans and a loose linen button-down, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, and she’s holding a paper plate stacked high with catfish. “Every other table is full,” she says, tilting her head toward the crowded room. “Mind if I sit?”
Rio nods before he thinks better of it. She slides into the booth across from him, and when she adjusts her seat to get comfortable, her bare knee brushes his denim-clad one under the table. He freezes for half a second, half ready to jerk back, but she doesn’t move away, just sets her plate down and grabs a bottle of hot sauce off the table. He can smell lavender hand cream over the fried grease and cigarette smoke drifting from the back porch, soft and unexpected, and he stares at his beer bottle like it holds the secrets of the universe so he doesn’t get caught staring at her mouth when she smiles.
They sit in silence for ten minutes, her knee still pressed light to his, before she snorts at a joke the guy at the next table tells about his idiot nephew trying to ride a lawnmower like a dirt bike. “I saw your shop when I was driving out to the lake last weekend,” she says, wiping crumbs off her fingers with a napkin. “The one with the beat-up 1960s Triumph parked out front? I have a 1978 CB750 my husband left me when he died last year, and I can’t get it to turn over for the life of me. Everyone in town says you’re the only person who knows what he’s doing with old bikes.”
Rio’s first instinct is to say no, he’s booked three months out, he doesn’t take side jobs from people he doesn’t know, but then she knocks her beer over when she reaches for a hushpuppy, and the golden liquid spills across the cuff of his gray work flannel. She swears under her breath, grabs a handful of napkins, and leans across the table to dab at the wet spot, her fingers brushing his bare forearm when she moves. Her nail polish is chipped sage green, her hands are calloused at the fingertips from turning book pages and turning wrench handles, he later learns, and the contact sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in almost a decade.
“Sorry,” she says, pulling back, her cheeks a little pink. “I’m clumsy as hell when I’m nervous. I’ll pay for the shirt, or—wait, I have a first edition of *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* I picked up at a garage sale last month. My husband had a copy he read until the pages fell out, but I don’t have much use for it. I’ll trade you that for an hour of your time to look at the CB?”
Rio has had three copies of that book fall apart on him over the years, and he’s been looking for a first edition for longer than he can remember. He hesitates, glances down at where her knee is still pressed to his, then up at her face, her dark eyes bright and unapologetic, no expectation in her expression like all the other women who’ve asked him for favors over the years.
When he leans in to tell her he’ll look at the bike first thing tomorrow morning, no trade necessary, just bring the book so he can flip through it while he works, their faces are six inches apart, and he can taste the cherry seltzer she mixed into her beer on her breath. Her hand rests on his wrist for ten full seconds when she laughs, relieved, and he doesn’t pull away.
She leaves an hour later, when the sun is dipping below the tree line and the VFW crowd is starting to thin out, and she slips him a crumpled scrap of notebook paper with her phone number scrawled on it in blue ink before she climbs into her beat-up Ford pickup. He sits there for another 20 minutes, finishing his third beer, the spot on his forearm still tingling where her fingers brushed him, the scrap of paper warm from being curled in his fist.
He tucks the paper deeper into his flannel pocket, flags down the bartender for one last cold beer, and for the first time in 8 years, doesn’t dread waking up early the next morning.
