Manny Ruiz, 59, has restored 47 vintage RVs in the seven years since his wife Elara died. He’s stubborn to a fault, refuses to hire an extra hand even when his bad left knee aches after a full day patching aluminum siding or rethreading water lines, and he avoids small town socializing unless smoked brisket is involved. The annual summer food truck rally in downtown Grants Pass is the only event he shows up to yearly without a reminder, and he’d planned to grab his order, hightail it back to his shop, and eat alone while sanding cabinets on a 1972 Airstream he pulled from a junkyard two months prior.
July heat sticks to his skin like tinfoil, his gray cotton flannel already soaked through at the armpits even though he left the shop at 6 p.m. He’s halfway through his root beer, staring at the brisket truck’s menu board, when a hard bump to his shoulder sends cold lavender latte splattering across his left sleeve. He curses under his breath, ready to brush off whoever it was and move down the line, until he looks down and sees Lila Marlow staring back, cheeks flushed, a crumpled napkin clutched in her hand. He’s known Lila since she was 12, when Elara dragged him to her middle school choir recital, and he’d spent six months avoiding her entirely ever since she moved back to take the county library director job. He’d written her off as just another young transplant who thought his work was a silly boomer hobby, a waste of space better used for apartments or a coffee shop.
She babbles apologies, leaning in to dab at the coffee stain on his sleeve before he can protest. Her knuckles brush his forearm, cool from holding the iced drink, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and vanilla perfume, the same kind Elara wore to 90s beach trips. He freezes, throat going dry, when she presses the napkin firmer to the fabric, her knee brushing his as she shifts to stay out of the way of teens running past with cotton candy. He tells her it’s fine, just an old shirt, but she shakes her head grinning, says she owes him a replacement drink and a stack of books she’s been holding for him.
He blinks, confused, and she explains she found a box of 1960s and 70s RV repair manuals in the library’s donation bin last week, recognized his name scrawled in the front of three, realized Elara must have donated them after he forgot them at her family’s cabin decades prior. He doesn’t know what to say, so he nods when she asks to sit at an empty picnic table off to the side while they wait for their food. They sit so close their thighs brush under the table, and he can feel heat radiating off her bare legs through his worn denim jeans. She leans in when he talks about the Airstream, her elbow resting an inch from his on the table, hazel eyes locked on his like he’s telling her the most interesting story she’s ever heard, not rambling about sealant grades and vintage AC units.
He’d spent the first ten minutes of their conversation screaming at himself internally, that this was wrong, that he was a creep for noticing how the sun hits the freckles across her nose, for liking the sound of her laugh, for remembering she’d begged him to teach her to change a tire at 16. The disgust he’d initially felt at his own wandering thoughts fades fast, though, when she admits she’s driven past his shop every morning on her way to work for six months just to see what he’s working on, that she’d been too nervous to stop and say hi because she thought he hated her.
The brisket line moves up, and they grab their orders, paper trays greasy and warm through the bottom. She stands to leave, slinging her canvas tote over her shoulder, and asks if she can drop the manuals off at his shop tomorrow after the library closes, if he’d show her the Airstream. He nods, tongue too thick to talk for a second, and she grins, squeezing his bicep quick before turning to walk toward her friends by the fried oreo truck. He stands there for a full minute watching her go, sun gilding the ends of her wavy auburn hair, his root beer now warm and flat in his hand. He doesn’t bother going back to the shop that night. He drives to the grocery store, picks up a six pack of hard lemonade he knows she likes, and spends an hour wiping down the Airstream’s interior until the wood cabinets glow.
