Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living bringing dead 1980s arcade cabinets back to life in a converted laundromat outside Lima, Ohio. He’s got grease permanently under his fingernails, a scar across his left eyebrow from a faulty Pac-Man marquee that fell on him last winter, and a rule he’s enforced for three straight years: he will not, under any circumstances, be alone with Lila Carter, his late best friend Jake’s widow.
The rule was non-negotiable, up until the annual Auglaize Township Volunteer Fire Department fish fry, when the only empty folding chair left within 20 feet of the beer cooler was parked right next to his folding table. He’d shown up an hour prior out of obligation, already planning to leave as soon as he finished his plate of catfish and hushpuppies, when Lila dropped her own paper plate down on the table across from him, then dragged the chair around to sit right at his side, so close their denim-clad knees brushed when she shifted her weight.
The scent hit him first: coconut sunscreen mixed with the faint, sharp tang of the menthol cigarettes she only smoked when she thought no one was watching, and a hint of the vanilla lip balm she’d worn since high school. He froze mid-bite of catfish, the crunchy cornmeal coating sticking to the roof of his mouth, when she reached past him for a can of Miller Lite from the cooler at his feet, her bare forearm brushing the hair on his bicep, warm and soft even through the thin cotton of his work shirt.
“Quit lookin’ like you just saw a ghost, Manny,” she said, popping the tab on her beer, the fizz hissing loud over the roar of the bouncy house generator and the old country song blaring from the speakers by the fryer. She held his eye contact for three full beats, a lazy smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, like she knew exactly how flustered he was. “I don’t bite. Unless you ask real nice.”
He fumbled for a napkin, his face heating up, because he’d spent the last three years actively avoiding her for exactly this reason. Jake had been his ride-or-die since they were 16, racing beat up pickup trucks down back dirt roads, skipping school to go fishing at the reservoir, helping Manny move his arcade equipment into the laundromat after his wife left him for a long-haul trucker seven years prior. When Jake got crushed under a hay baler three years back, Manny had told himself that wanting his widow was a betrayal, the lowest thing a guy could do, even if every time he saw her at the grocery store or the gas station his chest felt tight, like he was a 17 year old kid again working up the nerve to ask a girl to prom.
She leaned back in her chair, stretching one leg out so her ankle rested against his, the worn rubber of her work boot tapping gently against his scuffed steel-toe. “You gonna tell me why you’ve been duckin’ my texts for six months? I asked you to come look at the old Donkey Kong cabinet Jake left in the garage a dozen times. You never even wrote back.”
He cleared his throat, picking at a piece of coleslaw that had dripped onto his wrist. “Felt wrong, I guess. Crossin’ some line I ain’t supposed to cross.”
She laughed, low and warm, and leaned in so her mouth was inches from his ear, her breath hot against his skin, and he could feel the ends of her blonde hair brushing his shoulder. “Jake told me two months before he died, if anything ever happened to him, I should go after you. Said you were the only other guy he trusted not to be an idiot. Said you’d been lookin’ at me since we were 18, too dumb to do anything about it.”
The world went quiet for a second, the noise of the crowd fading into a hum, and he turned his head to look at her, their faces so close he could count the freckles across her nose, the tiny laugh lines around her eyes. He’d spent three years fighting this, telling himself it was wrong, that he was a bad friend for even thinking about it, that the gossip from the town busybodies would be unbearable. But when she reached out and brushed the crumb of hushpuppy off his chin, her thumb lingering on his jaw for half a second too long, all that resistance melted away.
He laced his fingers through hers under the table, where no one could see, calloused rough arcade repair hands against her softer, work-worn ones, and she squeezed back, hard. They sat there for another 45 minutes, talking about nothing, about the way the new kid at the fire department burned half the catfish batch, about the guy from Dallas who paid Manny 12 grand for a fully restored Space Invaders cabinet last month, about the way Jake used to sneak extra hushpuppies home for their old hound dog. No one paid them any mind, the rest of the crowd too busy yelling over cornhole games or herding their kids away from the fryer.
When she stood up to leave, she slipped him a crumpled piece of paper with her address scrawled on it, tucked into the pocket of his work shirt. “Come over tomorrow around 10. The Donkey Kong’s stuck on level 2. And if you stay late, I’ll make you that chili Jake used to say was better than any restaurant’s.”
He nodded, tucking the paper deeper into his pocket, and watched her walk to her beat up Ford F150, the sun setting behind her, painting the sky pink and orange. She waved over her shoulder before she climbed in, and he lifted his beer in return, his chest light for the first time in years.
The crinkle of the paper against his chest when he breathed felt like a promise he wasn’t scared to keep anymore.
