Rico Marquez, 53, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of east Austin for 17 years, and he’d rather spend 12 hours hunched over a seized engine than make small talk with strangers at a neighborhood event. His best friend dragged him to the annual east side chili cook-off anyway, saying he’d spent too many weekends alone since Lila moved to Portland for work last year, and Rico didn’t have the energy to argue. He leaned against the dented tailgate of his 1998 Ford F-150, sweating through the cuffs of his grease-stained flannel, sipping a lukewarm Lonestar, and wondering if he could sneak out before the judging started.
He turned to dump a half-eaten paper plate of chili in the trash can behind him and almost slammed right into Clara Voss, sending his beer sloshing halfway out of the can. He fumbled to steady the plastic cup of sweet tea she was holding in her left hand, his calloused knuckles brushing the soft, sun-warmed skin of her forearm, and his face went hot faster than it did when he fired up his welding torch. He knew who she was immediately: Lila’s 10th grade art teacher, the woman he’d met a dozen times at parent-teacher conferences and art shows, the one he’d secretly thought was too sharp, too pretty, too far out of his league to even make small talk with back when Lila was still in high school. Back then, thinking about her for even a second longer than necessary felt like a crime, like he was crossing some unspoken line he’d drawn for himself as a single dad.
She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of the country band playing two booths over, and wiped a drop of beer off the hem of her faded denim cutoff shorts. “Easy there, cowboy. I know your chili’s bad but you don’t have to take it out on me.” He gaped for a second, shocked she remembered him, and she smirked, leaning against the truck bed next to him so close their shoulders brushed every time someone squeezed past the crowded walkway. He could smell jasmine lotion mixed with the hickory smoke curling off the brisket pit 20 feet away, could see the faint smudge of charcoal under her left eye, like she’d been drawing earlier that day. She mentioned she still had the metal wolf sculpture Lila made for her senior project, the one Rico stayed up three nights helping her weld in his shop, and he found himself rambling about the 1967 Triumph he was restoring for a client, about the way the transmission kept locking up, and she didn’t look bored. Not even a little.
He told himself he was being an idiot. She was Lila’s old teacher, for Christ’s sake, he’d spent years seeing her in a classroom, holding a grade book, and here he was noticing the way her sun-bleached blonde hair fell over her shoulder when she tilted her head to laugh, the way she bit her lower lip when she asked him how much it would cost to fix up the beat-up 1978 Honda CB she’d picked up at a garage sale the month before. He told her she could use his shop whenever she wanted, no charge, just buy the parts, and her face lit up so bright he forgot how to breathe for half a second. They exchanged numbers before she left to help her cousin load up their chili booth, and he stared at her name in his phone for 10 minutes after she walked away, kicking himself for being so eager, so stupidly giddy like a teenager with a crush.
She showed up at his shop at 10 a.m. the next Saturday, carrying a 12-pack of Lonestar and a box of glazed donuts, wearing work boots and oil-stained overalls that fit her so well Rico had to look away for a second to collect himself. They spent the next four hours sanding rust off the CB’s gas tank, the old blues radio he kept on the workbench crackling through Muddy Waters tracks, their hands brushing every time they reached for the same sheet of sandpaper or the can of paint thinner. He was showing her how to adjust the carburetor, leaning over her shoulder so his chest was pressed to her back, when she turned her head to look up at him, their faces only inches apart. He didn’t overthink it. He leaned down and kissed her, slow, and she kissed him back, her hand coming up to tangle in the graying curls at the nape of his neck, the smell of paint thinner and jasmine wrapping around him so tight he forgot every stupid rule he’d made for himself over the last 8 years.
They pulled apart when the shop landline rang, both grinning like idiots, and she wiped a smudge of rust dust off his cheek with her thumb. He didn’t care that they’d spent all day only getting half the sanding done, didn’t care that the Triumph he was supposed to finish by Friday was still sitting half apart in the corner. He grabbed his keys off the hook by the door, asked her if she wanted to get carnitas tacos at the food truck down the street, and she nodded, slipping her hand into his, her palm soft against his calloused, grease-stained fingers.
