Manny Ruiz, 52, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage on the edge of Baker City, Oregon, for 17 years. He’s stubborn to a fault, eats the same meatloaf special at the diner every Wednesday, hasn’t so much as held a woman’s hand since his wife, Jenna, died of breast cancer eight years prior. He’s at the town’s annual summer food truck festival on an 82-degree Saturday, manning a fold-up table stacked with his shop’s decals, his fully restored 1978 Honda CB750 parked behind him glinting in the sun, sweat soaking through the back of his faded charcoal Carhartt tee. He twists the cap off a root beer, the plastic sticky under his fingers, when a woman walks up holding a paper cup of elote, corn crumbs dusting the corner of her mouth.
He doesn’t recognize her at first. She’s got sun-streaked dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, cutoff jean shorts that show a constellation of freckles across her thighs, scuffed steel-toe work boots, a cropped vintage Willie Nelson tee that rides up a little when she reaches up to brush a fly off her cheek. “Manny Ruiz,” she says, grinning, and his stomach drops when he places the scar on the left side of her upper lip, the one she got when she was 12 and crashed the mini dirt bike he’d let her ride around his shop’s parking lot. It’s Lila, Jenna’s youngest cousin, the one he’d thought was still living in Phoenix working as a travel nurse.
They hug quick, her bare arm brushing his, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and charred corn and something else soft, like jasmine, that makes the back of his neck tingle. She sits on the edge of his fold-up chair next to him, their knees knocking when she leans in to get a better look at the CB750, and he has to fight the urge to pull his leg away like a flustered teenager. She tells him she moved back three weeks prior to help her mom recover from knee replacement surgery, laughs so hard at his story about a customer who tried to bring in a lawnmower engine to put in a scooter that corn kernels fly out of her cup. He finds himself leaning in when she talks, too, listening to her tell stories about working ER shifts in Tucson during COVID, about the weird old motorcycle she bought for $200 that she can’t get to run, and for the first time in years he doesn’t feel like he’s just going through the motions of a conversation.
Guilt nags at him the whole time, sharp and hot. He’d changed Lila’s diapers when she was a baby, for Christ’s sake. He has no business noticing the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs, no business replaying the feeling of her arm against his over and over in his head. He keeps telling himself to keep his distance, to wrap up the conversation and send her on her way, but every time he tries to make an excuse to leave she asks him another question about the bikes he’s restored, and he can’t bring himself to cut her off.
The festival winds down as the sun dips low, painting the hills pink and orange, the crowd thinning out to groups of teens running around with snow cones and older couples hauling folding chairs back to their cars. Lila offers to help him load the CB750 into his trailer, and when they both reach down to grab the metal ramp at the same time their hands brush. She doesn’t pull away. She holds on for three full beats, her calloused nurse’s hand warm against his grease-stained one, and looks up at him, her dark eyes soft. “My mom told me you haven’t been on a date since Jenna died,” she says, quiet enough no one passing by can hear. “That you just lock yourself in the shop all the time.”
Manny freezes, his throat tight. He wants to yank his hand away, to tell her that’s none of her business, that she’s still just a kid to him, that this is wrong. But then she tugs on his hand a little, stepping closer until he can feel the heat coming off her body, until her breath fans across his collarbone. “I’m not 12 anymore, Manny,” she says, her voice low, almost a murmur. “You don’t have to be so careful around me.”
He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, all the guilt and resistance he’d been clinging to for the last two hours melting away like ice on a hot engine. He wraps one arm around her waist, pulls her in slow, and kisses her, tasting lime and chili salt from the elote on her lips, the faint sweetness of the cherry limeade she’d been drinking earlier. A group of kids runs past yelling, a taco truck’s generator rumbles 20 feet away, and he doesn’t even glance up to see if anyone they know is watching.
They pull apart after a minute, and she grins, swiping a smudge of chili salt off his chin with her thumb. “I got a six pack of Pacifico in my truck,” she says, nodding toward the parking lot. “Figured we could bring it back to your shop, you can take a look at that busted bike I picked up. Unless you got other plans.”
Manny shakes his head, grabbing his truck keys out of his pocket, not even bothering to double-check that the trailer gate is latched all the way before he opens the passenger side door for her.
