Manny Ruiz, 53, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block converted garage outside Asheville for 12 years. His biggest flaw is that he’s hidden behind work and VFW volunteer shifts ever since his wife left him for a craft brewery owner seven years prior, convinced any new connection will just end with him packing half his belongings into garbage bags while someone else drives off with the good cutlery. He avoids small town drama like he avoids cheap Chinese motorcycle parts, and he’s got a strict “no talking about personal lives” rule with every customer that walks through his shop door.
The Fourth of July street fair is sweltering, the air thick with charcoal smoke, cherry Kool-Aid syrup, and the distant crackle of pre-fireworks test shots down by the river. Manny’s manning the VFW bratwurst booth, wiping grease off his calloused hands from fixing the busted propane grill an hour earlier, when she walks up. She’s wearing frayed cutoff jeans, a faded 1995 Tom Petty tour tee, and scuffed white converse, a canvas tote slung over her shoulder stuffed with neon summer reading prizes. She holds eye contact with him for three full beats longer than a stranger would, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she spots the “No Hondas Allowed” screen print across the chest of his work shirt.
He nods at her, grabs a paper plate. “What can I get you?”
“Brat with extra sauerkraut, extra mustard, no relish,” she says, leaning against the booth’s wooden railing. Her shoulder brushes his bicep when she shifts her weight, and he catches a whiff of coconut shampoo and menthol cigarette smoke off her hair. When he passes the plate over, their fingers brush, hers warm and calloused too, and he freezes for half a second when she says her name is Lila Hollis.
Hollis. The last name of his high school senior year rival, the guy who stole his prom date, who built a sleazy real estate empire in town for 20 years before bailing on his wife for a 26-year-old paralegal last spring. Manny’s jaw tenses, half ready to tell her to take her brat and get lost, until she laughs and says she knows exactly who he is, that she’s heard he’s the only person within 100 miles who knows how to work on old Harleys without ripping people off. She inherited her dad’s 1978 Ironhead Sportster when he died six months prior, she says, and every other mechanic in town has tried to quote her double the actual value of the bike just to tune it up.
They chat for 20 minutes, the line for the booth dying down as everyone drifts toward the river to get spots for the fireworks. She leans in closer when a group of screaming kids runs past, her hip pressing against his thigh, and he fights the urge to put his hand on her waist to steady her when someone bumps into the railing from behind. He’s torn, his head screaming that getting tangled up with Jake Hollis’s ex-wife will turn the local gossip mill into a runaway train, that everyone in town will be whispering about him before the end of the week, but he can’t stop staring at the freckles across her nose, the way she tilts her head back to laugh when he makes a joke about the VFW’s cheap, watered-down draft beer. She brushes a stray sauerkraut crumb off the front of his work shirt at one point, her palm lingering on his chest for half a second too long, and he feels his throat go dry.
The first firework bursts overhead, red and gold, painting the whole street pink for a split second, and the crowd around them cheers. She steps even closer to avoid a group of teens running by with glow sticks, her chest brushing his arm, and looks up at him, her eyes glinting in the fireworks light. “I know people will talk if we’re seen together,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear her. “I don’t care. That bike’s been sitting in my garage for months, and I don’t trust anyone else to look at it.”
He hesitates for two beats, the voice in his head screaming to play it safe, to tell her to find another mechanic, to go back to hiding in his shop and his empty house after the fair ends. Then he brings his hand up, tucks a stray strand of hair that’s fallen in her face behind her ear, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She doesn’t pull away. “I close up the shop at 6 tomorrow,” he says. “Send me your address, I’ll stop by with my tool bag.”
She scrawls her address and phone number on the back of a summer reading program flier, presses it into his palm, her fingers curling around his for a second before she pulls away. “Don’t be late,” she says, winking over her shoulder as she turns to walk toward the library’s book booth down the street.
He stands there holding the flier, takes a sip of warm, watery draft beer, and realizes the heavy, dull dread he’s carried around in his chest for seven years feels a little lighter. A fellow VFW member claps him on the back, snickering and teasing him about Jake Hollis’s ex, and Manny just grins and flips him off, already mentally running through the list of parts he might need to bring for that 1978 Ironhead.
