Manny Ruiz is 61, runs a vintage camper restoration shop out of the backyard of his coastal Oregon home, and hasn’t voluntarily attended a town social event in seven years, not since his wife packed her bags and moved to Bend with a realtor 12 years her junior. His only flaw, per his part-time shop assistant Javi, is that he’s stubborn enough to cut off his own nose to spite his face—he’d turn down a high-paying restoration job rather than make small talk with a client who asks too many personal questions, he’d eat frozen taquitos for dinner three nights in a row rather than stop at the diner where his ex-wife’s cousin waits tables. He only showed up to the fire department’s annual summer cookout because Javi reminded him the crew cut his bill in half last spring when faulty wiring burned out half his shop’s power tools, and owing favors to first responders is the one rule Manny never breaks.
He’s planted by the industrial beer cooler at the edge of the park, wearing the cleanest pair of Carhartts he owns (still dotted with a few faint rust stains he couldn’t scrub out) and sipping a pale ale that’s warmer than he likes it, when his hand brushes another reaching for the last cold IPA in the crate. He pulls back fast, mumbles an apology, and finds himself staring at a woman he’s never seen before, late 50s, silver streaks in her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, wearing cutoffs and a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, a smudge of charcoal on her wrist from the grill. She laughs, warm and rough, says “Don’t sweat it. I’m Clara, the new librarian. Moved here last month. You’re the camper guy, right? The one who fixes those old Shastas and Airstreams?”
Manny blinks. Most people in town only refer to him as “that guy whose wife left him” or “the grumpy restoration guy who never talks to anyone.” He nods, and she steps closer, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep when she leans in to yell over the group of firemen yelling about a cornhole score. She smells like coconut sunscreen and old paper, the kind of scent that sticks to your jacket after you spend an afternoon browsing a used bookstore. “I just bought a 1972 Scotty Sportsman off Facebook Marketplace,” she says, tapping the chipped burgundy nail polish on her can of beer. “Frame’s solid, but the roof leaks like a sieve, and I can’t figure out how to replace the old linoleum without cracking the subfloor. Everyone says you’re the only person within 50 miles who knows what he’s doing with that stuff.”
He’s halfway to making an excuse—he’s booked three months out, he doesn’t do side work for people he doesn’t know, he’s got a stack of parts to sort when he gets home—when he notices she’s staring at the thin, silvery scar wrapping around his left forearm, the one he got when a loose trailer hitch swung out and clipped him two years back. She doesn’t look away when he catches her, just smirks, nods at the scar. “Looks like you’ve got better battle scars than the fire chief over there. His are all from falling off his bike drunk at last year’s cookout.”
Something tight in Manny’s chest loosens, the kind of tension he’s carried around so long he forgot it was there. He leans against the cooler, tells her about the time he messed up a 1968 Airstream’s plumbing so bad he had to tear out the entire kitchen and start over, and she laughs so hard she snorts, claps a hand over her mouth like she’s embarrassed, and he finds himself laughing too, a real laugh, not the tight, polite huff he uses for clients.
When the fire department starts calling raffle numbers, she tugs his wrist to pull him over to the ticket table, her palm warm against the scar on his forearm, and he lets her, no questions, no eye-rolling about stupid small-town raffles. They don’t win the grand prize, a whole side of grass-fed beef from the local ranch, but they win a $75 gift certificate to the oyster bar off the highway, the one with the picnic tables over the water that he’s driven past a hundred times but never bothered to stop at.
She leans in close when they hand her the certificate, her breath brushing the edge of his ear, loud enough only he can hear. “I don’t suppose you’d want to cash this in tomorrow around 6? We can talk about my Scotty’s leaky roof after. Unless you’ve got better plans.”
Manny freezes for half a second, then nods, because he doesn’t have better plans. His only schedule for tomorrow was rewatching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the 17th time and eating a frozen pepperoni pizza for dinner. He pulls his beat-up flip phone out of his pocket, lets her type her number in, her fingers brushing his when she hands it back.
She says she has to leave to pick up her old hound dog from the sitter, squeezes his forearm one more time before she turns to walk away. He stands there holding the crumpled raffle ticket stub and his half-empty, warm beer, watching her climb into her beat-up forest green Subaru with a “Read Banned Books” sticker on the back bumper, and she waves out the window when she pulls out of the parking lot. He texts Javi ten seconds later, says he can’t come in tomorrow, he’s got a work meeting he forgot to schedule. He shoves his phone back in his pocket, finishes his beer, and walks to his truck, already mentally listing the tools she’ll need to fix that Scotty’s roof.
