Manny Ruiz, 52, spent 28 years climbing power poles for the western North Carolina utility company before a 2021 knee injury sidelined him, and he’s spent every day since tending to his 12-acre Christmas tree farm outside Asheville, stubbornly refusing to hire even part-time help even when his knee aches so bad he can barely climb out of bed in the morning. He’s held that stubbornness like a shield ever since his ex-wife left him seven years prior, fed up with his refusal to ask for support when he needed it most. He’d avoided every extended family function, every local event where he might run into her side of the family, until this year’s county fair, when the extension agent begged him to enter his prize-winning blue spruce sapling in the horticulture contest.
The August air is thick with humidity, the sharp smell of fried dough and cow manure hanging low over the fairgrounds. Manny wipes sawdust off the cuff of his work jeans with one calloused hand, leans against the rough wooden post of the beer garden, and twists the cap off a cold IPA, the sound of the pop lost under the roar of the monster truck show going on at the main arena. He’s about to head back to his truck when he sees her.
Lena Marquez, 47, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the one he’d spent 15 years quietly avoiding eye contact with at family dinners, the one who’d sent him a handwritten get-well card after his knee surgery that he’d hidden in the glove box of his truck for three years before he worked up the nerve to throw it away. She’s leaning against the bar, the same messy dark curls he remembers, sun freckles scattered across her nose, wearing a faded 2006 Flaming Lips tour t-shirt and cutoff denim shorts, work boots caked in the same red clay that coats every inch of his farm. She looks up, catches his gaze, and grins so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle.
He freezes for half a second, half tempted to turn and walk the other way, but she’s already weaving through the crowd of fairgoers toward him, her boots thudding against the packed dirt. “Manny Ruiz. I knew that sawdust on your jeans had to be you,” she says, stopping so close he can smell coconut sunscreen and the same lavender perfume she’s worn since she was 19, the one he’d once told his ex-wife he liked more than the expensive perfume she bought for holidays. She holds out a hand to shake, and when their fingers brush, his skin prickles, a jolt he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager on his first date.
He mumbles a greeting, half guilty, half giddy, and when she asks if she can take a sip of his beer, he hands it over without thinking, his knuckles brushing her wrist as he passes it. She takes a long drink, swallows, and laughs when he makes a face at the line of people waiting for deep-fried Oreos at the stand next to the beer garden. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” she says, leaning in closer when the monster truck show’s announcer yells over the speakers, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep. She tells him she moved back to town last month, inherited her aunt’s pottery studio just 10 minutes down the road from his tree farm, gave up her graphic design job in Portland because she was sick of sitting at a desk all day.
He finds himself leaning into her too, telling her about the farm, about the sapling he entered in the contest, about how his knee acts up when the humidity gets this high, things he hasn’t told anyone since his ex left. The guilt nags at the back of his head the whole time, that quiet voice saying this is wrong, she’s your ex’s sister, you don’t do this, but every time she laughs at one of his dumb jokes, every time her hand brushes his when she gestures at something across the fairgrounds, that voice gets quieter and quieter.
When she asks if he wants to ride the Ferris wheel with her, he says yes before he can overthink it. The line moves fast, and before he knows it they’re sitting next to each other in the rickety metal car, the ground dropping away beneath them as it climbs. When they reach the top, the ride stops for a minute, the sun dipping low over the Blue Ridge Mountains, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the noise of the fair fading to a quiet hum below them. She turns to him, her knee pressing against his bad one, and says she always had a crush on him, even when he was married to her sister, that she never said anything because she didn’t want to break up the family, but his ex has been remarried in Florida for four years now, no one cares about old grudges anymore.
He hesitates for a beat, then reaches up, brushes a stray curl off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leans into the touch, her hand coming up to cover his. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to. The Ferris wheel starts moving again, and when they step off onto the dirt, she laces her fingers through his, her palm warm and calloused from throwing clay, his rough from decades of climbing poles and trimming tree branches. He doesn’t pull away.
They walk toward the food stalls, chattering about the farm, about her pottery studio, about how she wants to come out next weekend to pick out a Christmas tree for her studio, even though it’s still August. He buys her a deep-fried Twinkie, and when she licks powdered sugar off the corner of her mouth, he knows he’s not going to say no to anything she asks for the rest of the night.
