Manny Rios, 52, spends most workdays up to his elbows in gear oil and carburetor grit, restoring 70s Japanese motorcycles for collectors across the Southwest. He’s skipped the local fire company chili cookoff three years running, but his old part-time shop hand Jimmie talked him into it this spring, saying the fire chief’s brisket chili entry was worth burning a layer of tongue skin off for. He’s leaning against the keg stand, plastic cup of light beer sweating in his calloused, scarred hand, when he catches a whiff of lavender and roasted pine, looks over, and it’s his new next door neighbor. The one who moved in three weeks back, who he’s only waved at over the split cedar fence when he’s been out loading bike parts into his pickup, never stopping to actually talk.
He’s been actively avoiding her, if he’s honest. Last week he caught her leaning on the fence for a full five minutes watching him lift a 150lb engine block onto a workbench, she smiled and he froze like a teenager caught snooping in his mom’s underwear drawer, turned on his heel and walked straight into his garage without waving back. He heard from the mail carrier she was widowed 18 months prior, moved to Austin from Chicago to get away from old memories, and the idea of talking to someone who was still carrying that kind of weight made his chest tight. He’s gotten used to being alone in the seven years since his ex wife left him for a guy who sold timeshares, convinced anyone his age who showed interest was either looking for free mechanic work or a built-in caretaker for their aging parents.
She’s holding a paper plate stacked with cornbread, steps back fast to avoid a kid sprinting past with a dripping blue popsicle, and bumps right into him, her elbow brushing the soft, faded exhaust burn scar on his forearm. She apologizes immediately, laughing so the crinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes show, and says she’s been meaning to bring over a jar of her grandma’s peach jam for two weeks, but every time she’s walked over his garage door is rolled shut and she didn’t want to bug him while he was working. She’s standing close enough he can smell the cedar in her lip balm, her knee brushes his when a group of firefighters squeezes past to grab more beer, and she doesn’t step back.
His internal monologue warps for a second, half of him screaming to make an excuse about having to get back to a bike he’s supposed to finish by the end of the week, the other half unable to stop staring at the tiny freckle right above her upper lip, the way she tucks a strand of auburn hair behind her ear when she asks him if he’s tried the chili yet. He makes a dumb joke about the last community chili cookoff he went to giving him food poisoning that lasted three days, and she snorts so loud a couple standing next to them glance over.
The fire department chief grabs the mic a few minutes later to announce the chili winners, and the crowd surges forward, some guy behind him shoving his shoulder hard enough he stumbles. He grabs her waist on instinct to keep her from falling into a folding table stacked full of open hot sauce jars, his calloused hand splayed across the soft curve of her hip under her oversized flannel shirt. Her hand flies to his chest to steady herself, palm flat right over his thudding heart, and they hold that position for three slow beats, the noise of the cookoff fading to a hum for a second. She doesn’t pull away, just tilts her chin up, so quiet only he can hear her over the shouting. “I don’t bite, you know. You can stop hiding behind your garage door whenever you want.”
He doesn’t overthink it for once, no spiraling about what it might mean, no worrying he’s going to mess it up before it starts. He asks her if she wants to ditch the cookoff, come over to his shop, see the 1972 Honda CB750 he’s restoring for an oil rig worker in Dallas, he’s got a six pack of cold craft root beer in the mini fridge, and if she’s nice he’ll even let her sit on the frame. She grins, laces her fingers through his calloused, grease-stained ones, and says only if they stop by her house first so she can grab that jar of peach jam she promised him.
They walk the three blocks back to their neighborhood side by side, her shoulder brushing his the whole way, and when he stops in front of his garage door to unlock it, he doesn’t feel that old familiar tightness in his chest he’s carried around for seven years. He flicks the overhead light on, the chrome on the half-restored CB750 glinting warm under the fluorescent bulbs, and she squeezes his hand before she steps over the threshold.
