Leo Marquez, 53, runs a vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage on the edge of Asheville, North Carolina. He hasn’t voluntarily attended a community event in seven years, not since his ex-wife signed their divorce papers and moved to Miami with a timeshare salesman she’d met on a girls’ trip. His only real flaw is that he holds grudges against himself harder than he holds them against anyone else; he’s spent the better part of a decade turning down dates, ignoring flirty comments from regulars at the diner down the street, convinced that letting anyone new into his space would be some kind of betrayal of the life he thought he’d have. He only agreed to pour beer for his buddy’s homebrew club at the annual fall festival because Jimmie showed up at his shop at 7 a.m. with a breakfast burrito and a threat to hide all his metric socket sets if he bailed.
The September air is crisp enough that his flannel sleeves stay rolled down for the first two hours, even with the sun slanting through the oak trees overhead. He’s got a smudge of old bike grease on his left forearm he forgot to scrub off that morning, and he’s mostly been avoiding small talk, just handing over cups of hazy IPA and amber ale, counting down the minutes till he can get back to the half-restored 1978 CB750 sitting on his lift at the shop. Then she steps up to the booth, and he freezes mid-pour, beer foaming over the edge of the cup onto his work boot.
It’s Marnie Hale, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce signing, when she slipped him a pack of spearmint gum across the table while his ex was yelling at the lawyer about who got the lake house. He’d spent half his marriage feeling stupidly guilty for the split second of heat he got every time she stopped by the house, every time she’d lean over his shoulder to ask about the bike he was working on, every time she laughed at one of his dumb jokes when his ex would roll her eyes. She’s wearing worn jeans and a faded Dolly Parton t-shirt, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, and she’s grinning like she knows exactly how flustered he is.
She orders a pale ale, and their fingers brush when he hands her the cup. The shock of static that runs up his arm is so sharp he almost drops the tap handle. She laughs, the sound bright over the hum of the crowd and the bluegrass band playing off at the other end of the park. She says she just moved back to town last month, after her own divorce went through, and she inherited her dad’s old 1972 CL350 that’s been sitting in a storage unit for 15 years. She asks if he’d be willing to look at it, and he almost says no—he doesn’t take on random side jobs, doesn’t let people hang around his shop while he works—before he finds himself nodding, scribbling his cell number on a beer-stained napkin, the paper rough under his pen. She tucks the napkin into the pocket of her jeans, leans in close enough that he can smell lavender perfume and the faint hop scent of the beer in her hand, and says she always thought he was too good for her cousin. He can’t think of a single thing to say back, just stands there holding a half-empty beer jug while she walks away, waving over her shoulder.
He can’t focus for the rest of his shift, fumbling cups, forgetting how much to charge people, Jimmie teasing him about looking like he’d seen a ghost. By the time he locks up the booth, the sun’s gone down, string lights strung between the trees glowing gold, the air cold enough that he can see his breath when he huffs. She’s leaning against the hood of his beat-up 2004 Ford F150, holding a crumpled paper bag and a six pack of the pale ale she’d ordered earlier. She says she didn’t feel like going back to her empty rental house alone, and he doesn’t protest when she climbs into the passenger seat, doesn’t even think twice when she suggests they drive up to the Blue Ridge Parkway overlook to eat the BBQ sandwiches she’d picked up.
The view over the valley is dotted with the orange glow of porch lights from the houses down below, the air smelling like pine and distant wood smoke. They eat the sandwiches leaning against the hood of the truck, passing a beer back and forth, talking about the bikes she used to race as a teenager, about the CB750 he’s been working on for six months, about how messy and stupid both their divorces were. She reaches over halfway through the second beer, wiping a smudge of BBQ sauce off his chin with her thumb, the callus on the pad of her finger rough against his skin, and he doesn’t pull away. He admits he used to think about her all the time when he was married, felt like a total creep for it, and she laughs so hard she snorts, says she used to make up excuses to stop by his old house just to watch him work in the garage, thought she was the one being weird for it.
They sit there till the sky is dark enough that you can see the Milky Way streaked across it, no more awkward pauses, no more quiet guilt hanging between them. He drives her back to her small rental house on the west side of town, walks her up to the front porch, the screen door creaking when she pushes it open a crack. She asks if he wants to come in, see the photos she has of her dad’s old CL350. He steps over the threshold behind her, letting the door click shut behind them.
