Rafe Mendoza, 52, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a converted two-car garage in central Oregon for 17 years. He’s got a scar snaking across his left eyebrow from a 2018 crash on a back road, grease permanently crusted under the edges of his fingernails, and a rule he hasn’t broken once since his wife left him eight years prior: no drama, no attachments, no one getting close enough to mess up the quiet, predictable routine he built to pull himself out of the months of missed work and blackout drinking that followed the divorce. He’s at the town’s annual summer street fair manning his shop’s booth when he sees her, and for half a second he thinks he’s imagining things.
It’s 93 degrees, the air thick with the smell of grilled corn, cotton candy, and exhaust from the rickety Ferris wheel at the end of the block. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, scuffed white Converse, and holding a fried Oreo dusted with powdered sugar, auburn hair streaked with sun falling in loose waves past her shoulders. He’d know that face anywhere: Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the kid who used to hang around his shop when she was 16, begging him to teach her how to change the oil on her beat-up Honda Civic. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce papers were signed.
She grins when she spots him, sauntering over to the booth like she’s got all the time in the world. She leans her hip against the rough wooden edge, her forearm brushing his bicep for three full seconds when she reaches for a custom shop keychain fanned out on the table in front of him. The contact sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in years. She says she saw his name on the booth sign when she drove into town for her grandma’s 80th birthday, couldn’t believe he was still here, still fixing bikes. Her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher around the edges, and every time she laughs she tilts her head to the side, her eyes flicking from his mouth back up to his eyes like she’s waiting for him to say something bold.
They talk for 40 minutes while the fair buzzes around them. She tells him she’s a graphic designer in Portland, hates the city, hates the roommates who leave their matcha cups all over the counter, hates that everyone she meets there is only interested in talking about their side hustles and their microdose routines. He tells her about the 1972 CB750 he’s been restoring for a client for six months, the custom pinstriping he hand-painted on the tank last week. Her knee keeps bumping his where they stand side by side, even though the booth is wide enough for them to stand a foot apart. When she mentions his ex-wife, she snorts, says she always thought her cousin was an idiot for leaving him for a guy who sold crystal-infused essential oils out of a converted Sprinter van.
The words hang in the sticky air for a second. Rafe’s first instinct is to shut it down, to step back, to remind himself this is off limits, that if his ex finds out she’ll raise hell all over town, that half the people here already think he’s a bitter recluse who spends too much time alone with his bikes. But then Lila leans in a little closer, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint tang of cherry soda on her breath, and that voice in his head screaming bad idea gets quieter, quieter, until he can barely hear it. He offers to show her the CB750 at the shop after the fair wraps up, and she says yes before he’s even finished the sentence.
The walk back to the shop is three blocks long, and she stays so close to him their shoulders brush every other step, even though the sidewalk is wide enough for three people. The shop is 10 degrees cooler inside, smells like motor oil and the lemon Pledge he uses to polish leather seats. He flips on the overhead fluorescent, and the CB750 glows under the light, chrome polished to a mirror shine, the navy blue pinstriping he spent 12 hours on sharp and perfect. She walks over to it, runs her palm slow along the curve of the gas tank, her fingers grazing his knuckles when he steps up next to her to point out the detail work. She says it’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen, and when she turns to him, she’s so close their chests are almost touching.
She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, that she drove to the fair specifically hoping she’d run into him, that she didn’t care if it was weird or if her cousin would throw a fit. Rafe freezes for a beat, that old fear of disruption, of losing the quiet he worked so hard for, flaring in his chest for half a second. Then she tilts her chin up, and he can see the flush high on her cheeks, the way her pupils are blown wide in the low light, and he doesn’t fight it. He leans down, kisses her, her lips tasting like powdered sugar and the cheap cherry soda she was drinking earlier, her hands coming up to rest on his shoulders, the rough calluses on his palms soft against the bare skin of her waist.
They spend the rest of the night on the frayed plaid couch he keeps by the shop door, drinking warm amber beer from the cooler he keeps behind the workbench, talking until the sun starts to come up pink over the oak trees at the edge of the property. He tells her about the months after the divorce, about how he almost sold the shop, about the rule he made for himself about no attachments. She tells him she doesn’t do drama, that she’s tired of guys who want to talk about their five-year plans instead of just being present, that she’s only here for whatever he wants to give her. He tells her he’s got a spare room above the shop, fully furnished, if she ever wants to stay for a week, a month, however long she wants. She grins, holds up her phone to show him she already texted her grandma she wasn’t coming back to her house that night. He reaches for her hand, laces his grease-stained fingers through hers, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to pull away.
