Rafe Marquez, 52, has restored 117 vintage pickups in the eight years since his wife left, and he’d argue every single one of them has been less trouble than a romantic relationship. He runs his shop out of a converted two-car garage behind his east Austin bungalow, keeps a mini fridge stocked with Lone Star and a radio tuned permanently to classic country, and hasn’t accepted a dinner invitation from anyone who isn’t his 78-year-old mom in half a decade. His biggest flaw, if you ask his mom, is that he’d rather sand rust off a 1972 Chevy C10 until his arms ache than give anyone a chance to disappoint him again. He’s at the neighborhood chili cook-off on a crisp October Saturday only because his mom entered his brisket chili without asking, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d rather pull a transmission in 100-degree heat than make small talk with people he’s lived next to for three years and still can’t name.
He’s leaning against the leg of his pop-up tent, hoodie sleeves rolled up to show forearms crisscrossed with minor welding scars, grease still crusted under his fingernails from a job he wrapped up an hour prior, when a woman walks up and stops dead in front of his chili pot. She’s wearing a cutoff red flannel, paint splatters dotting the thighs of her high-waisted jeans, sun streaks running through her wavy brown hair, and she grins like she knows him. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, who he’d only met once at their wedding 15 years prior, when she was still a college kid covered in acrylic paint and complaining that the open bar only served cheap white wine.
“Rafe, right?” She leans in to sniff the chili, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand soap and turpentine, sharp and warm, and his brain short-circuits for half a second. “I heard you entered the cook-off. I just moved two houses down from you last week.”
He blinks, grabbing a sample cup and filling it before he can think of something to say. The last time he talked to anyone connected to his ex was the day she loaded her stuff into a brand new F-150 he’d customized for the guy she left him for, and he’d made a vow to himself to avoid every single person in her family like they carried a contagious disease. But Lila is laughing at the “No Wimpy Chili” sticker on his pot, and her knee brushes his when she shifts her weight to grab a plastic spoon, and he hasn’t felt his chest feel this light in longer than he can remember.
She takes a bite of the chili, moans soft enough that only he can hear it, and he feels heat crawl up the back of his neck. “Holy shit, that’s better than the stuff my grandma used to make. Your ex always said you couldn’t cook, what a liar.”
He snorts, taking a sip of his beer, and lets himself tease back. “Your cousin also thought synthetic oil was for fancy people and that a carburetor was a type of pasta. I wouldn’t put much stock in her opinions.”
They talk for 20 minutes, standing so close their arms brush every time one of them moves, her eyes locked on his the whole time like he’s the only interesting person in the whole park. She tells him she inherited her dad’s 1967 Ford F-100 when he passed last year, it’s sitting in her driveway rusted through on the passenger side, she’s been watching him work on trucks in his garage from her kitchen window and was too nervous to come knock on his door. He tells her about the 1967 F-100 he restored two years ago, sold to a rancher out in Hill Country, and she leans in even closer, her breath fanning over his cheek when she asks a question about how to fix rust holes.
He’s torn so bad he can almost feel the two sides of his brain fighting. One side is screaming that this is a terrible idea, that mixing with his ex’s family is asking for drama, that she’d call him a lowlife creep for even talking to her cousin, that he’s too old to be chasing thrills that will end with him alone again, sanding rust at 2 a.m. to forget the hurt. The other side is fixated on the way her lip tucks between her teeth when she’s listening, the way her fingers brushed his when she handed him back her empty sample cup, the fact that she laughed at all his dumb truck jokes like they were the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
She tilts her head, and her fingers brush the back of his hand, light as a breeze, when she asks the question he’s been half-dreading and half-hoping for. “I was gonna make enchiladas tomorrow night. If you’re not busy, you could come over, take a look at the truck first. I’ll even throw in a six pack of that fancy Mexican lager you keep in your shop fridge, I saw it through the window last week.”
He hesitates for two full beats, the voice in his head yelling no so loud it almost drowns out the band. Then he looks at her, grinning, waiting, and he says yes before he can overthink it.
She pulls a crumpled napkin out of her jacket pocket, scribbles her number on it in blue marker, adds a tiny doodle of a pickup truck in the corner, and presses it into his palm. She waves, tells him she’ll see him tomorrow at 6, and walks off to join a group of her friends by the corn stand.
He stands there for five minutes, holding the napkin in his calloused hand, the grease under his fingernails smudging the edge of the number a little. He pulls his beat up flip phone out of his pocket, punches the number in slow, one digit at a time, and saves it under “Lila Truck” so he doesn’t have to explain it if anyone sees it. He takes one last sip of his warm beer, glances over at her house two blocks away, and taps the save button twice to make sure the number sticks.
