Manny Ruiz, 51, makes his living patching up 1980s arcade cabinets for basements, dive bars, and the occasional rich kid’s game room. His hands are crisscrossed with tiny soldering burns, his left wrist has a faded Pac-Man ghost tattoo he got on a dare when he was 19, and his biggest flaw is that he assumes every person who smiles at him wants a free repair. It’s a habit he picked up in the seven years since his ex-wife left, taking half his tool collection and every last one of his rare Atari cartridges with her. He’d stopped bothering with casual small talk after three separate neighbors cornered him at the grocery store to beg for fixes on their broken pinball machines, no cash offered, just a six-pack of cheap beer as “payment.”
On this rainy April Friday, he’s camped out at the local VFW’s weekly fish fry, the paper tray of greasy cod and crinkle cut fries in front of him half-eaten, a half-empty pint of lager sweating into the sticky plastic table. He’d spent the whole day manning a booth at the town’s small business expo, showing off the custom Donkey Kong cabinet he’d built over three months of late nights, and he’s too tired to even pretend to be nice if someone approaches him. The jukebox in the corner spits out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts, the air smells like vinegar, fried batter, and old tobacco smoke stuck in the carpet, and he’s already mentally mapping out his route home when someone slides into the vinyl booth across from him.
It’s Clara Bennett, the new head librarian who moved to town six months prior. He’d donated a box of his old 1970s sci-fi paperbacks to the library’s used book sale back in February, and he’d left as fast as he could after she’d smiled at him and asked if he wanted to stay for coffee, certain she’d eventually bring up the library’s glitchy 1981 Space Invaders cabinet he’d heard other patrons complaining about. She’s got a stack of dog-eared paperbacks balanced on her lap, ink stains smudged across the side of her left hand, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid dotted with flecks of rain. She slides a tattered first edition of *Dune* across the table toward him, and their fingers brush when he reaches for it. His are calloused, rough from years of prying open metal cabinet frames and twisting tiny screws, hers soft, the pads of her fingers ridged from turning thousands of book pages. He freezes for half a second, so off guard he almost drops the book.
“Found this in the leftover sale stock,” she says, her voice warm enough to cut through the chill blowing in from the VFW’s open back door. “I remembered you said you’d been looking for a copy with the original cover art when you dropped off your donations.”
He blinks, surprised she’d remembered something that small. He’d mumbled that line on his way out the door, half turned away from her, certain she wasn’t listening. His first instinct is to make an excuse, grab his jacket, leave, but she’s leaning forward a little, her knee brushing his under the table, and he can smell lavender and vanilla on her sweater, faint enough that he thinks he might be imagining it if it wasn’t so much nicer than the reek of fry grease around them. He doesn’t move his leg away.
They talk for 40 minutes, first about the book, then about the expo booth she’d stopped by earlier that day, how she’d thought the custom paint job on his Donkey Kong cabinet was the coolest thing at the whole event. He makes a dumb joke about how 80s arcade hardware is more reliable than any modern tech, or any relationship he’s ever had, and she laughs so hard she snorts a little, the sound mixing with the Johnny Cash track playing over the speakers. He doesn’t even realize he’s smiling until his cheeks start to hurt.
The tightness in his chest hits when he finally works up the nerve to ask her what she wants in exchange for the book, half convinced she’s going to bring up the Space Invaders cabinet, ask him to fix it for free. She tilts her head, confused for a second, then laughs again, softer this time. “I don’t want anything,” she says, leaning in a little closer, her shoulder almost brushing his now that she’s shifted to sit on the edge of the booth. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you for weeks. You always look so busy, or like you’re trying to avoid everyone, I didn’t want to bother you.”
He feels his face heat up, embarrassed at how long he’s spent assuming the worst of everyone around him, of her specifically. He admits he’d been avoiding her because he thought she’d ask for a free repair, that he’s terrible at saying no to people he actually likes, so he’d just run away instead. She grins, and her hand rests on his forearm for a full three seconds before she pulls it back, the heat of her touch seeping through the thin flannel of his work shirt.
“I do have a Space Invaders cabinet at my place that glitches every time you get to level three,” she says, and his stomach drops for half a second before she keeps talking. “I’ll pay you your full hourly rate, obviously. And I made chocolate chip cookies this morning. The good kind, with extra sea salt. I was gonna ask if you wanted to come over and take a look at it. If you want.”
He hesitates for exactly two heartbeats, the old instinct to run, to make up an excuse about having a repair first thing in the morning, screaming in the back of his head. Then he looks at her, the way she’s biting her lip a little like she’s nervous he’ll say no, the ink stain on her thumb, the way her knee is still pressed to his under the table, and he nods.
He finishes the last of his beer, grabs his jacket off the back of the booth, and carries her stack of leftover books for her out to her car, the cool rain mist hitting his face as they walk across the parking lot. The smell of lavender lingers on his flannel sleeve where her hand touched it. She unlocks her trunk, and when she passes him the stack of books to set inside, her hand brushes his elbow again, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. He slides into the passenger seat of her sedan, the *Dune* paperback tucked under his arm, and smiles when she hands him a warm cookie she’d stashed in her center console, still slightly soft in the middle.
