Manny Ruiz, 52, vintage camper restorer, has spent the last hour pressed against the cinder block wall of the Dripping Springs beer garden, nursing a lukewarm Modelo and pretending to scroll through parts listings on his phone. He’d only shown up to the annual Hill Country Vintage Camper Rally afterparty because his business partner begged him to bring the fully restored 1962 Shasta they’d spent six months on for the judge’s showcase, and he’d already mapped his exit route: cut through the back by the taco truck, hop in his beat-up F-150, be home in his garage by 9:30, no small talk required. He’d avoided every neighbor who tried to flag him down so far, preferring the quiet hum of power tools to the forced chatter of community events ever since his divorce eight years prior; he’d long since decided loneliness was easier than the sting of someone leaving again.
The collision comes out of nowhere. One second he’s squinting at a listing for a vintage Shasta window seal, the next a woman stumbles over a folding camp chair leg, sloshing two cups of IPA down the front of his grease-stained work shirt, her free hand clamping down on his bicep to keep from face-planting into the taco truck’s metal side. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, the woman who moved into the ranch-style house three doors down from him three months prior, the one he’d only ever waved at from across the driveway while he hauled camper panels in and out of his garage. She smells like jasmine and lemon dish soap, her palm is rough with calluses he guesses come from hauling potted plants for the native nursery she runs, and when she looks up at him, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners instead of wide with apology, he freezes. “Well that’s one way to introduce myself,” she says, wiping a stray drop of beer off his collar with the edge of her flannel sleeve, her fingernails chipped with terracotta polish. “I’ve been working up the nerve to knock on your door for weeks to ask about that Airstream you’ve got parked in your side yard.”
His first instinct is to mumble a half-hearted it’s fine, make an excuse about having to get back to a project, and bolt. But she doesn’t give him the chance, holding out the one undamaged cup of beer to him, her fingers brushing his when he takes it. “This one’s still good,” she says, nodding toward a half-empty picnic table under the string lights strung between two oak trees. “I won’t bug you about campers too long, promise. I just want to hear how you fixed that water damage on the Shasta you brought tonight. I’ve got a beat-up 1970s pop-up I’ve been trying to restore in my backyard for a year and I’m this close to setting it on fire.” The air smells like grilled elote and cedar smoke from the fire pit at the center of the garden, a mariachi trio playing off to the side slows their set to a soft cumbia, and when she sits down and pats the spot next to her, he finds himself sitting without thinking about it.
Their knees brush under the table when she leans in to yell over a group of kids yelling as they run past with glow sticks, her shoulder pressing flush to his for a split second when a crowd of rally attendees squeezes past their table. She doesn’t push for personal details, doesn’t ask about his divorce or why he’s always alone when he’s working in his yard, just listens when he rants about the nightmare of tracking down original 1960s cabinet hardware, laughs so hard she snorts when he tells her about the time he glued his left hand to a camper door with epoxy and had to call his partner to bring him acetone. She points to the thin scar snaking up his right wrist, her index finger brushing the raised skin lightly when she asks how he got it, and he doesn’t flinch like he usually does when people touch him unprompted. He tells her about the jigsaw accident his first year in business, and she nods, holding up her left hand to show him a matching scar across her palm from a chainsaw mishap when she was clearing brush for her nursery.
He’s so wrapped up in talking he doesn’t hear the emcee announce the showcase winners until someone claps him on the back and yells that his Shasta took second place, netting him a $500 gift card to the local auto parts store. He blinks, looking down at the crumpled certificate in his hand, and turns to Clara before he can talk himself out of it. “I’ve been meaning to pick up a new lift gate for my truck,” he says, tapping the gift card against the edge of his beer cup. “You said you’ve been hauling 5-gallon pots of oak saplings out of your truck by yourself every week. I can split the cost of the lift with this, install it for free, if you bring me fresh heirloom tomatoes from your greenhouse every week through the summer.”
She grins, the scar above her left eyebrow crinkling when she leans in and taps her beer cup against his. “Only if you let me help you sand down that 1971 Airstream you’ve got parked by your garage next weekend,” she says. “I’m terrible at fine woodwork but I’m great at mindless manual labor, and I bring homemade churro cookies to every job I work.” They leave the beer garden together when the mariachi trio packs up their instruments, the sky dark enough that the fireflies are flickering through the oak trees, and they walk slow down the residential street back to their houses. He grabs a leftover carnitas taco he’d stashed in his pocket earlier out, hands it to her, and when she takes a bite, salsa dribbles down her chin. He wipes it off with the edge of his flannel sleeve, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her jaw for half a second. She tells him she’ll be at his driveway at 9 a.m. Saturday, tomatoes in tow, and turns to walk up her front steps. He leans against the hood of his truck, watching her unlock her front door, and doesn’t even think about making an excuse to cancel.
