Javi Mendez, 59, made the drive to the annual Maplewood block party only because Mabel, the owner of the diner on Main, begged him to bring the restored 1957 root beer float sign he’d spent three months sanding, rewiring, and refilling with neon pink gas. He planned to stay 10 minutes max, drop the sign off for Mabel to auction off for the local rec center, slip back to his garage workshop before anyone could corner him into small talk about his ex-wife or the business that fell apart a decade prior.
The air smelled like charred bratwurst and cherry Kool-Aid, 70s rock warbling from a beat-up portable speaker perched on a picnic table, kids darting between lawn chairs with water guns leaving damp spots on his scuffed Carhartt overalls. He leaned against the bed of his beat-up Ford F-150, sipping a lime seltzer he’d grabbed from a cooler, already mentally running through the list of repairs he needed to do on a vintage motel sign he’d picked up the week before, when a shadow fell over his drink.
He looked up. Lila Marquez stood three feet away, holding two hard seltzers, a smudge of dark potting soil high on her left jaw, cutoff jean shorts showing the faint scar on her right knee, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee tucked into the waistband. He recognized her immediately, his jaw tightening. She was Rico’s ex-wife, Rico being the former business partner who’d screwed him out of $32,000 on a casino sign job, vanished to Las Vegas without a note, left Javi holding the bag for all the material costs and a lawsuit from the casino owner. Javi had sworn he’d never speak to anyone connected to Rico, ever.
She stepped closer, close enough that he could pick up the scent of jasmine shampoo mixed with the sharp, green smell of cut grass, held one of the seltzers out. “I know you hate him,” she said, no preamble, no apology, just a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I left him 8 years ago when I found out he was cheating on me with the cocktail waitress from the casino we were working on. Took nothing but my car and my houseplant collection. Moved here three months ago, I rent the bungalow two doors down from your shop. I’ve watched you work through the garage window a couple times. You’re good.”
When he reached out to take the seltzer, their fingers brushed. The contact was light, accidental, but Javi felt a jolt run up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since his wife left him 12 years prior. He didn’t pull away, just held her gaze, the golden light from the string lights strung between the oak trees catching the gold flecks in her brown eyes. She didn’t look away, either, laughed soft when he didn’t say anything for a beat. “You wear those overalls every single day, even when it’s 85 degrees out. You got a secret stockpile of them hidden somewhere?”
The conflict hummed low in his chest, half disgust at the idea of even talking to the woman who was once married to the guy who almost ruined him, half sharp, warm curiosity he hadn’t let himself feel in years. He found himself talking, telling her about the overalls he got for half price at the farm supply store, about the motel sign he was restoring, about how he’d gotten into neon work when he was 19, working at a drive-in theater outside of El Paso. They walked over to the root beer float sign propped against the side of the pickup, she leaned in to point at the way the pink neon glowed against the deepening blue dusk, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep. He didn’t shift away.
She asked him if he wanted to walk back to her place, see the tiny neon cactus he’d sold at the farmers market last month, the one he’d wired to glow pale green when it turned dark. For a second, all he could see was Rico’s red, angry face the last time they’d fought, the way he’d screamed that Javi was too cautious, too stuck in the past to ever be successful. Then he looked at Lila, her dark hair sticking to the back of her neck from the humidity, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was half convinced he’d say no. He nodded.
The sound of the block party faded behind them as they walked the two blocks to her bungalow, crickets chirping in the grass along the sidewalk, fireflies darting through the dark. When they got to her porch, she fumbled with her keys, dropped them on the weathered wood step. They both bent down to grab them at the same time, their foreheads knocking soft, both laughing, the sound light and easy. She took the keys from his hand, her thumb brushing over the scar on his knuckle from a neon tube breaking last winter, then brushed a stray strand of gray hair off his forehead, her palm lingering warm against his cheek for a beat. She turned the lock, pushed the door open, and the soft, green glow of the neon cactus spilled out over the porch step. He followed her inside.
