Manny Ruiz is 62, retired air traffic controller who relocated from El Paso to a tiny northern Michigan lake town seven years prior, three months after his wife of 32 years lost her fight with ovarian cancer. He’s got a scar splitting his left eyebrow from a motorcycle crash when he was 22, a habit of twisting the silver wedding band he still wears on his ring finger when he’s nervous, and a flaw he refuses to admit out loud: he’s scared so stiff of letting anyone new into his orbit that he’s turned down every dinner invite, blind setup, and even casual beer offer from neighbors for the last four years. Most days he’s content to spend 10 hours in his cinder block shop restoring vintage outboard motors, greasy up to his elbows, classic rock playing low on a beat-up boombox.
He only agreed to bring his fully restored 1972 Boston Whaler to the town’s annual fall craft beer festival because his niece, who ran the event’s vintage watercraft display, begged him for three weeks straight. He’d planned to stay an hour max, say hi, load the boat back up, and be home in time for the college football pregame show. That plan went out the window when he walked back to his trailer after grabbing a root beer from the concessions stand and found her leaning against the tire, boot propped on the rim, a half-empty cup of spiked blackberry cider in one hand.
She’s Clara Bennett, 58, the mayor’s wife. Everyone in town thinks their marriage is rock solid, but Manny heard through the grapevine they’d separated six months prior, no official announcement, just Clara moving into the old cabin her dad left her on the far side of the lake. She’s got streaks of silver threading through her auburn hair, a smattering of freckles across her nose that don’t fade even in the winter, and calluses on her palms when she holds out a hand to shake, from splitting her own firewood, she says. Their fingers brush longer than a standard handshake, warm and rough against his grease-stained knuckles, and Manny feels a jolt he hasn’t felt in so long he almost forgets what it is.
He thinks about leaving three separate times in the next 45 minutes. When a group of the mayor’s supporters walks past, casting curious looks their way, he tenses, ready to grab his keys. When he snorts laughing at her story about her husband breaking three bolts trying to fix her dad’s old outboard then paying a teen 200 bucks to haul it to the scrap yard, embarrassment pricks his neck and he almost bails. When he catches himself twisting his wedding band so hard his finger turns pink, guilt coiling tight in his chest like he’s betraying his late wife, he makes a move for the trailer hitch. But every time, she says something that anchors him—asks about the 1978 Honda he’s restoring in the back of his shop, mentions she’s seen him out on the lake at dawn fishing more than once, admits she’s driven past his shop every Wednesday for two months just to see if he’s out front working on a motor.
The fireworks start right as he’s working up the nerve to ask if she wants to get coffee sometime. The crowd surges toward the lake shore, everyone jostling for a better view, and she grabs his wrist to yank him behind the big oak tree next to his trailer so they don’t get knocked around. Their backs are pressed to the rough bark, the sky lighting up red and gold and blue above the treeline, and she looks up at him, her eyes glinting with the light from the fireworks, and before he can think twice he’s leaning down to kiss her. It’s soft at first, tentative, his hand hovering at her waist like he’s scared she’ll pull away, but she curls her fingers into the front of his flannel shirt and pulls him closer, the taste of blackberry cider on her lips.
When the fireworks end, the crowd cheers and starts dispersing, cold air curling around their faces as the noise dies down. She pulls a crumpled cider tasting ticket out of her jacket pocket, scrawls her cell number on the back in sparkly purple pen, and tucks it into the front pocket of his work jeans, her fingers brushing the skin just above the waistband of his boxers for half a second. She tells him she’s got fresh peach pie cooling on her kitchen counter if he feels like stopping by anytime, then walks to her beat-up silver pickup, waves over her shoulder, and pulls out of the parking lot.
Manny stands there for five minutes, watching the taillights fade down the road, then pulls the ticket out of his pocket, runs his thumb over the smudge of purple lipstick on the edge of the paper. He pulls his phone out of his other pocket, opens a new contact, and types her number in before he can talk himself out of it.
