Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living restoring vintage RVs out of a cinder block shop on the edge of Newport, Oregon, and he’d spent the last seven years avoiding the town’s annual coastal street fair like it carried a contagious strain of carburetor rust. His ex-wife had dragged him to it every June for the first decade of their marriage, and he still associated the sticky sweet scent of cotton candy and tinny mariachi covers of 90s country with the week she’d packed her bags and moved to Bend with a real estate agent she’d met at the fair’s beer garden. He only showed up this year because his most reliable customer, a retired teacher who was refurbishing a 1972 Winnebago to drive to the Arctic Circle, had begged him to drop off a custom water pump part before she left town the next morning.
He was wearing the same oil-stained Carhartt he’d had on since 6 a.m., work boots caked in pine sap from the tree that had fallen on his shop’s roof the week prior, and he was trying to cut through the crowd fast enough to avoid eye contact with anyone he knew when his shoulder clipped the edge of a wooden booth stacked with glass jars of dried herbs and hand-poured beeswax candles. A quart jar of lavender fell off the edge, and he reached for it the same second the woman running the booth did, their knuckles brushing hard enough that he felt the faint scratch of her chipped sage-green nail polish against his skin. Her hand was cool, even in the 78-degree heat, and she smelled like cedar and ylang-ylang, the same scent his grandma used to burn in her kitchen when he was a kid visiting her in southern California.
He mumbled an apology, set the jar back on the table, and was already turning to leave when she said, “You’re the RV guy on Oak Street, right? The one who fixed that beat-up 1968 Airstream for the surf crew last winter?” She was leaning against the booth’s front post, one boot propped on the lower crossbar, and he noticed the tiny anchor tattoo on her left wrist first, then the smattering of freckles across her nose, then the way she was holding his eye contact like she had no interest in looking away. The anchor was identical to the one he’d gotten inked on his forearm when he was 19, working summer salmon fishing boats out of Ketchikan.
He hesitated, one foot already pointed toward the fair exit, and nodded. He didn’t do side jobs for people who lived in town, had made that rule after a local dentist had haggled him down $300 on a transmission rebuild three years prior, but he found himself sticking around anyway, shifting his weight from one boot to the other, like some part of his body had decided for him that he wasn’t leaving yet. She told him her name was Lena, she’d moved into the pale blue house two doors down from his shop three weeks prior, and she had a half-restored 1969 Volkswagen Westfalia sitting in her driveway that wouldn’t turn over, had been trying to work up the nerve to knock on his door and ask for help.
A group of kids raced past, screaming, their blue raspberry snow cones dripping down their wrists, and one slammed into Manny’s back hard enough that he stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of her booth, his forearm pressing flush against hers for three full seconds. Neither of them pulled away. She laughed, a low, rough sound that cut through the noise of the fair’s Ferris wheel bell and the crowd’s chatter, and admitted she’d stood on her porch three separate nights that week, holding a six pack of craft lager, too nervous to walk over because he always looked so focused when he was bent over an engine, like he’d snap at anyone who interrupted him.
He told her about the ex, about the fair-related grudge he’d been carrying for seven years, about how he’d forgotten what it felt like to talk to someone who didn’t want to ask him about carburetor parts or towing fees. She didn’t pity him, didn’t give him that awkward tight smile people always gave when he mentioned the divorce, just nodded and handed him a sample tin of peppermint lip balm, said he looked like he spent too much time in the coastal wind, his lips were chapped raw. He swiped it on, and it left a faint sweet aftertaste, like the honey his old neighbor used to leave on his porch every summer.
He agreed to come over to her house at 9 the next morning to look at the Westfalia, said he’d bring the good cold brew he made every morning in a 5-gallon bucket, and she said she’d have pork empanadas fresh out of the oven, her abuela’s recipe, extra cilantro on the side. He stuffed the jar of lavender she insisted he take for free into his Carhartt pocket, waved, and turned to walk toward the fair exit, the water pump part still clutched in his other hand. When he glanced back over his shoulder 20 feet later, she was leaning against the booth post, twirling the end of her chestnut braid around her finger, grinning like she already knew he was going to show up 10 minutes early with an extra container of cold brew, just in case she wanted a second cup.
