Manny Ruiz is 52, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a cinder block workshop on the edge of Grand Junction, Colorado. He’s avoided every local festival, potluck, and neighborhood gathering since his divorce three years prior, convinced the only conversations on offer were rehashes of his ex-wife’s very public affair and unsolicited advice about dating again. His buddy Jake practically dragged him to the summer craft beer festival, saying he’d turn into a hermit who only talked to Airstreams if he stayed home another weekend, so Manny showed up in his usual oil-stained flannel, work boots caked with dust, and planted himself by the elote truck to avoid small talk.
He’s halfway through a hazy IPA when someone slams into his shoulder, sending a splash of beer down the front of his flannel. He’s about to snap a retort when he looks down and sees Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, holding a crumpled napkin in one hand and a half-eaten elote cup in the other. He freezes. The last time he saw her was at his divorce mediation, where she sat in the back of the room, rolling her eyes every time his ex demanded he sign over half his workshop equipment.
She laughs, a low, rough sound that cuts through the bluegrass band playing a hundred feet away, and holds out the napkin. Their fingers brush when he takes it, and he notices her fingertips are calloused, smudged with faint gray clay dust, no fancy nail polish like the women his friends keep trying to set him up with. She just moved back to town last month, she says, laid off from her tech project management job in Austin, finally leaning into the pottery side gig she’d been running out of her garage for years.
They lean against the side of the food truck, shoulders almost touching, as they talk. Manny can smell jasmine perfume mixed with the smoky char of grilled corn and the piney hop scent of his beer, and every time she turns to look at him, her dark eyes hold his longer than feels polite, like she’s actually listening when he rants about the 1972 Airstream he’s restoring that’s got a rusted frame no one else wanted to touch. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to bring up his ex, or ask if he’s seeing anyone, or make the same tired jokes about how he’s better off without her, but she doesn’t. Instead, she teases him about the flannel, says she remembers him wearing that exact same one when he helped her jump her beat-up Honda Civic outside the grocery store six years ago, when he was still married and she was only in town for Christmas.
The thought of crossing that line, of getting involved with anyone tied to his ex, makes his stomach twist for a second. His ex had made it very clear when they split that anyone in her family was off-limits, that she’d spread every ugly rumor she could think of if he so much as looked at one of her cousins. He’d spent three years abiding by that unspoken rule, keeping to himself, avoiding any situation that might stir up old drama.
She notices he’s quiet, leans in a little closer so he can hear her over the crowd yelling for the food truck. “I never bought her side of the story, you know,” she says, her voice low enough no one else can hear. “She was an idiot to throw what you two had away for a guy who sold used pickup trucks and still lived with his mom. I’ve had a crush on you since I was 19, for Christ’s sake. I just never said anything because you were married.”
Manny blinks. He’d spent three years thinking everyone in town only saw him as the schmuck who got left for a used car salesman. No one had ever told him they’d noticed him before, noticed the way he stayed late to fix single moms’ camper trailers for free, or brought extra firewood to the senior center every winter, or spent every Sunday morning restoring old birdhouses for the city park.
He doesn’t overthink it. He asks her if she wants to skip the rest of the festival, go see the Airstream he’s working on. She grins, wipes the last of the elote cheese off her chin with the back of her hand, and says yes.
The workshop is dim when they get there, only strung with fairy lights and the single overhead work lamp above the Airstream. She runs her hand along the polished aluminum side of the trailer, her clay-stained fingers leaving faint smudges that Manny doesn’t even care about wiping off. She says she’s been looking for a small, mobile space to set up her pottery wheel, so she can do pop-up markets around the western slope. Manny says he’s got a beat-up 1968 Scotty camper out back that he’s been meaning to restore for no particular reason, they could trade: he fixes up the Scotty for her studio, she makes him a set of heavy ceramic mugs that won’t break when he drops them on the workshop floor.
She turns to face him, and they’re so close he can feel her breath on his neck. She reaches up, brushes a fleck of sawdust off his shoulder, then presses her palm flat to the spot on his flannel where the beer spilled earlier. He doesn’t pull away when she leans in to kiss him, doesn’t waste time worrying about what his ex will say, or what the town will gossip about, or any of the stupid rules he’s been living by for three years.
Later, they’re sitting on a folding chair outside the workshop, sharing a cold root beer he had stashed in the mini fridge, watching the sun set pink over the Book Cliffs. She’s sketching mug designs on a scrap of notebook paper, her shoulder pressed tight to his, and Manny realizes he hasn’t felt this light since before he got married. He reaches over, taps the sketch of a camper mug she’s drawn, and says he wants that one for his morning coffee.
