Rico Morales, 53, has spent the last eight years restoring vintage travel trailers out of a weathered red barn on his late mom’s 10-acre plot outside Lockhart, Texas. He works alone, mostly, turns water-damaged 1960s Scottys and dented 1970s Airstreams into livable tiny homes for retirees and digital nomads who pay him in cash and the occasional case of craft IPA. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few friends he has left, is that he’s made a sport of talking himself out of any good thing that doesn’t involve a wrench or a can of brake cleaner. Ever since his wife left for Portland and a software engineering job that paid three times what he makes in a good month, he’s written off casual connections entirely, convinced any interest from a woman he meets at rallies or the local hardware store is either pity or a ploy for free repair work. He drove out to this small April vintage camper rally in nearby Seguin planning to fix a handful of leaky faucets for old regulars, eat too much cheap brisket, and camp alone in his 1965 Avion he restored for himself five years back.
He’s wiping axle grease off his calloused hands with a frayed bandana after patching a broken sewage line for a retired couple from San Antonio when he spots the Airstream strung with warm white fairy lights at the edge of the rally grounds. The hand-painted wooden sign propped against the step reads BANNED BOOKS – PAY WHAT YOU CAN, and he snorts, already walking over. He’s seen the local news clips, the screaming school board meetings where parents yelled about 90s romances and coming-of-age novels being “pornographic” enough to pull from the high school library shelves. He’d rolled his eyes when his niece texted him a photo of the list, half the titles were books his ex-wife used to read curled up in the Avion’s bench seat on their old camping trips, he’d teased her for the cheesy plot lines but had listened close when she read the softer, sweeter passages out loud over campfire coffee.
The woman behind the folding table stacked with paperbacks looks up when he steps into the circle of fairy light glow, and holds eye contact for a full beat longer than casual politeness requires. She’s wearing a faded Willie Nelson tee, cutoff denim shorts, and scuffed white cowboy boots, has a silver hoop through her left nostril and a smudge of ink on her left wrist. “Looking for anything specific?” she asks, and her voice is low, warm, sounds like she’s spent years reading out loud to groups of kids. He nods at the dog-eared copy of *Bridges of Madison County* on the top of the stack, and when she reaches for it at the same time he does, their hands brush. He feels a sharp, warm jolt up his forearm, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and kissed his first girlfriend in the back of his dad’s pickup. He pulls his hand back fast, flustered, already mentally berating himself for being the creepy older guy hitting on the book girl at a rally. She just laughs, no malice, and hands him the book, her fingers brushing his again on purpose this time, he swears.
She tells him her name is Lila, she quit her job as the high school librarian two weeks prior after the school board voted to pull 27 books from circulation, most of the ones stacked on her table. She drove the Airstream out to the rally to get rid of the extra copies she’d bought when the district said they were going to throw their seized copies away, was planning to drive up to Waco next for another rally the following weekend. He stays longer than he planned, leans against the side of the Airstream, trades stories about the worst camper repair jobs he’s ever had for stories about the kids who’d sneak into her library during lunch to check out the banned books before the board made her lock them up. When she leans past him to grab a copy of *The Color Purple* for a teen girl who’s wandered up, her shoulder presses firm against his bicep, and he catches the scent of coconut shampoo and wood smoke on her hair. The sun dips below the oak trees lining the rally grounds, the air cools down fast, and most of the crowd drifts off to their own campfires.
She pulls a cooler of spiked grapefruit seltzer out from under the table, offers him one, and he takes it, doesn’t overthink it. They sit side by side on the Airstream’s step, their knees almost touching, watching a group of retirees play bluegrass a few campsites over. She points up at the sky at a cluster of stars he can never remember the name of, and when she swats a mosquito off his jaw, her palm brushes his skin warm and soft, and they both freeze. For half a second he’s ready to make an excuse, stumble back to his own camper, spend the rest of the weekend kicking himself for being an idiot. Then she leans in, slow enough he can pull away if he wants, and kisses him. It’s soft, no urgency, tastes like grapefruit seltzer and mint gum. He kisses her back, lets go of the stupid voice in his head yelling that he’s too old, that this is a midlife crisis cliché, that he’s going to get his heart broken again.
He helps her load the leftover boxes of books into the back of her pickup truck when the sun comes up the next morning. She tucks a folded slip of paper into the front of the book she’d given him the night before, her phone number scrawled in blue ink, a note underneath that says she’s looking for a small plot of land outside Lockhart to open a used bookstore with a few vintage campers out back for travelers to rent, and asks if he knows any good trailer restorers for the job. He smirks, tucks the book under his arm, and tells her he might have a lead. He stands in the red dirt of the rally grounds watching her pickup pull out onto the highway, the book pressed warm against his side, and doesn’t even think about talking himself out of calling her when he gets back to the barn that afternoon.
