Javi Ruiz, 53, made his living sanding rust out of 1960s travel trailers and reupholstering their dinette cushions in scratchproof vinyl. He’d avoided every small town east Texas community event since his wife left him for a pharmaceutical sales rep eight years prior, convinced idle chatter and forced small talk were a waste of the time he could spend under a hood or buffing a dented aluminum shell. The only reason he showed up to the annual fire department crawfish boil was because the crew had put out an electrical fire in his shop the previous winter, saving three half-restored Airstreams and his collection of vintage campground brochures.
He perched on the edge of a folding table at the far end of the park, holding a sweating Shiner Bock in one calloused hand, picking meat out of a crawfish tail with the other. The air reeked of cayenne, boiled corn, and burnt hot dog buns, ZZ Top’s La Grange hummed low over the crowd’s chatter, and peanut shells crunched under his work boots every time he shifted his weight. He’d already turned down three invitations to join different groups at picnic tables, already lied twice about having to get back to a job early, when he felt a sharp elbow dig into his ribcage.
Lena Carter, the 49-year-old used bookstore owner who’d moved into the house across the street from his shop three months prior, stumbled into him, her free hand grabbing his bicep to steady herself before a stack of paper plates she was carrying could clatter to the ground. Beer sloshed over the rim of Javi’s can, soaking the hem of her linen button down and the front of his faded work shirt. She laughed, the sound bright enough to cut through the noise around them, and looked up at him with hazel eyes flecked with gold, a smudge of crawfish seasoning dusted across the point of her jaw. She apologized, wiping at the beer on his shirt with a paper napkin, her palm pressing soft against his chest for half a second too long before she pulled back.
He knew who she was. He’d seen her carrying boxes of books into her store on moving day, seen her sitting on her porch at dusk reading with a glass of white wine, seen the thin gold wedding band on her left hand, knew her husband was the town’s new fire chief, the same guy who’d carried his most prized brochure collection out of his burning shop back in January. The thought should have made him step back, should have made him mumble an excuse and leave, but he found himself leaning in instead, asking if she was okay, if she’d tripped over the cinder block holding up the table leg.
She said she’d been meaning to knock on his shop door for weeks. She’d inherited a 1972 Scotty Sportsman from her dad, had it parked behind her bookstore, wanted to fix it up to drive out to Big Bend for a month in the fall. Her husband kept saying he didn’t have time to help, kept saying they had more important things to spend money on, and she’d heard through the town grapevine Javi was the best in the state at restoring small campers. She’d even brought a stack of 70s campground ads to donate to the silent auction that night, figured he might want to bid on them.
When she asked if he wanted to walk down to the edge of the bayou for a minute to get away from the noise, he hesitated for all of two seconds before saying yes. The grass was damp with early evening dew, seeping through the knees of his jeans as they walked, crickets chirped loud in the oak trees, and fireflies blinked pale gold over the murky water. She sat on a fallen cypress log, patted the spot next to her, and he sat, their knees brushing when he shifted to get comfortable.
She talked for ten minutes straight about the Scotty, about how her dad had taken her camping in it every summer when she was a kid, about how her husband thought the whole idea was a waste of time, about how she’d stand in the window of her bookstore and watch him work in his shop across the street, how she liked how focused he got, how he never stopped to chat with the people who wandered by asking for free estimates. Her hand rested on his forearm when she laughed at his story about restoring a 1968 Airstream that had a family of raccoons living in the walls, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his shirt, and he could smell coconut shampoo mixed with crawfish spice and sweet tea on her skin.
He’d spent eight years telling himself he didn’t want anything to do with anyone, that he was better off alone with his trailers and his old records, that messing with a married woman was the lowest thing a guy could do. But when she tilted her chin up, her eyes falling to his mouth for half a second before she looked back up at him, every one of those rules fell away. He kissed her slow, soft at first, until her hand tangled in the short graying hair at the back of his head, and he could taste the peach sweet tea she’d been drinking on her tongue.
They heard someone yelling her name from the park a minute later, the deep rumble of her husband’s voice carrying over the trees. She pulled back, brushing her thumb across his lower lip to wipe off the smudge of her lip gloss, and smiled. She said she’d drop the Scotty keys off at his shop at 8 a.m. the next day, said she didn’t want him working on it alone. He nodded, watching her walk back toward the string lights strung across the park, the hem of her shirt fluttering in the warm breeze. He took a long sip of his warm beer, leaning back against the cypress log, and didn’t feel the sharp twist of guilt he’d expected. All he felt was the faint tingle of her lip gloss on his mouth, and the quiet hum of something he hadn’t felt in eight years, sharp and bright and alive, thrumming under his skin.
