Roland Voss, 53, has fixed every vintage arcade cabinet within a 40-mile radius of his Tampa garage shop for the last decade. He’s gruff, keeps his hair cropped so short the gray at the temples is barely visible, and hasn’t accepted a non-work social invitation since his divorce finalized eight years prior. His biggest flaw: he assumes every friendly overture comes with a hidden bill attached, a hangover from his ex-wife draining his savings to move across the country with a personal trainer half his age. He only showed up to the neighborhood block party because the owner of his biggest client bar begged him to haul a fully restored Ms. Pac-Man cabinet for the kids’ corner, and he planned to drop it off, grab a free beer, and bolt before anyone could corner him into small talk.
He’s leaned against the splintered white picket fence 10 feet from the food tables, halfway through a lukewarm domestic lager, when she bumps into him. The tray of key lime tarts she’s carrying slams into his left shoulder, a dollop of tangy curd splattering across the chest of his faded 1990s Donkey Kong work shirt. She reeks of coconut sunscreen and jasmine perfume, her warm forearm brushing his bicep when she leans in immediately to dab at the stain with a crumpled paper napkin. Roland freezes. No one has stood that close to him on purpose outside of a work transaction in longer than he can remember. His first reaction is irritation, a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue, until he meets her eyes. She’s got laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel irises, silver hoop earrings catching the glow of the string lights strung between the oak trees, and her lower lip is tucked between her teeth like she’s already bracing for him to snap.
He doesn’t snap. He recognizes her, suddenly—Mara, the woman who owns the pothos and succulent shop three doors down from his garage, who brought a beat-up 1982 Centipede handheld into his shop last month for her 10-year-old nephew. He’d fixed it for free, because the kid had drawn a T-Rex on the envelope she brought the payment in, and he’d never bothered to mention it to anyone. She mentions it now, her voice soft over the chatter of the crowd and the tinny sound of Ms. Pac-Man dying over the speakers. She doesn’t step back when he grunts a response, stays close enough that he can smell the lime on her breath, can see the flecks of moss green in her eyes. He finds himself talking, first about the Centipede handheld, then about the finicky circuit boards in old pinball machines, then about how all the new phone games feel hollow, no weight to the controls, no real payoff when you win. She listens, leaning in every now and then to ask a question, her hand brushing his wrist once when she laughs at his story about a regular who tried to fix his broken Street Fighter cabinet with a rubber band and a tube of super glue.
They sit on the curb 20 minutes later, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts, watching a group of 8-year-olds scream over the Ms. Pac-Man high score. Roland’s been fighting the urge to ask her to get a drink after the party for 10 minutes, his chest tight with the familiar fear that he’s reading too much into the interaction, that she’s just being nice, that if he lets himself want something again he’ll end up with an empty bank account and an empty house all over again. Then a rogue firework, set off by a teen who snuck a pack in his backpack, skitters sideways across the grass straight toward them. Roland reacts on instinct, yanking her against his chest, his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders, until the firework fizzles out in a shower of orange sparks a foot away from their scuffed sneakers.
They’re both breathing hard, her face inches from his, her hands fisted in the front of his work shirt. She’s the one who speaks first, her voice low enough that no one else can hear. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to stop by your shop after hours for three weeks. I thought you hated everyone.” Roland doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t run through the list of reasons this is a bad idea. He asks her if she wants to come back to his garage when the party wraps up. He’s got a fully restored Space Invaders cocktail table he just finished fixing, he tells her, and he keeps cold root beer and a pack of those key lime tarts she likes in the mini fridge by his workbench.
She says yes. He stays for the rest of the party, doesn’t check his watch once, doesn’t scan the crowd for an exit route. When they walk back to his shop an hour later, the streetlights casting gold across the sidewalk, she slips her hand into his. Her palm is calloused from repotting cacti, his is calloused from soldering circuit boards, and they fit together without any awkward fumbling, like they were made to. He unlocks the garage door, flips on the string lights he strung above the workbench, and she laughs when she sees the spare Centipede handheld he kept for parts sitting on the shelf next to his soldering iron.
