Manny Ruiz is 59, runs a vintage camper restoration shop out of a weathered red barn 10 minutes outside Asheville, and hasn’t willingly attended a community event in the seven years since his wife died of ovarian cancer. His biggest flaw is that he’s convinced any friendly attention from women is either pity for the widower, or his sister’s overzealous matchmaking attempts, so he spends most of his days covered in fiberglass dust and aluminum shavings, only speaking to clients dropping off rotting RVs or picking up polished, retrofitted road homes. His sister had badgered him for three weeks straight to come to the summer food truck rally, so he’d finally caved, planning to hide by the beer tent for 45 minutes then slip back to his quiet farm.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden tent pole, cold IPA sweating through the paper coozie in his hand, when she bumps into him. She’s carrying a plastic tray loaded with chili cheese tater tots, and a dollop of grease and melted cheddar splatters on the cuff of his gray flannel, the one he’d thrown on that morning even though the July air was already sticky with humidity. “Shit, I’m so sorry,” she says, and before he can brush it off, she’s grabbing his wrist with one cold, calloused hand, dabbing at the stain with a crumpled paper napkin from her pocket. Her nails are chipped sage green, matching the tiny succulent enamel pin on her overalls strap, and when she looks up at him, her dark brown eyes crinkle at the corners like she’s already laughing at an inside joke.
He recognizes her a beat later. Lila Marquez. His old high school auto shop teacher’s daughter. The last time he’d seen her, she was 12, trailing after her dad in the shop, covered in motor oil, begging him to teach her how to change a tire. That’s the first twist of discomfort in his gut, that faint, unwanted flicker of desire warring with the voice in his head that says this is wrong, that she’s his old mentor’s kid, that he’s almost 20 years older than her, that people will talk. But then she grins, wide and unapologetic, and says, “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me. I used to steal your Skittles out of your lunch box every time you stayed late to work on that Camaro.”
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he doesn’t make often these days, and says he does remember. They lean against the tent pole together, the smell of fried green tomatoes and hickory smoke curling through the air around them, while a local cover band blasts Tom Petty from the stage a hundred feet away. She tells him her dad passed last spring, that she moved back to town three months ago to open a small plant shop downtown, that she’s been looking for someone to restore the beat up 1968 Volkswagen Bus her dad left her, had no idea he was still in the area running his restoration business. Her shoulder brushes his every time a group of screaming kids runs past, and every time it does, he feels that same jolt, the kind he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed his wife in the back of that same Camaro senior year.
She doesn’t treat him like a widower, doesn’t give him that soft, sad smile everyone else in town does when his wife’s name comes up. When he mentions he still has the Camaro parked in the barn, she lights up, asks if she can come see it sometime. He finds himself telling her about the 1972 Airstream he’s been working on for six months, the one he’s planning to drive up the coast to Maine once it’s done, the trip he and his wife had planned before she got sick. She doesn’t pity him. She just nods, says that sounds like the kind of trip worth taking, even if you have to take it alone first.
The conflict warring in his chest fades slow, like the sun dipping below the tree line, painting the sky pink and orange. The discomfort, the guilt, the worry about what people will say? It doesn’t vanish completely, but it feels small next to the way she’s leaning in, so close he can smell lavender and potting soil in her hair, the way she holds eye contact when he talks, like she actually cares what he has to say, not just making small talk.
When her tray of tots is long gone, her empty soda can crushed at her feet, she leans in a little more, her voice dropping just loud enough for him to hear over the music. “I’ve got that bus parked in the garage at my dad’s old house,” she says, pulling her phone out of her overalls pocket. “Got a bottle of 12 year old bourbon he left on the counter too. You wanna come take a look at it tonight? No pressure. Just if you feel like it.”
He hesitates for half a second, remembers the last thing his wife said to him the night before she died, when she told him to stop closing himself off from the rest of the world, that he deserved to have fun again even if it wasn’t with her. He nods, takes her phone, types his number in, their fingers brushing when he hands it back to her, that same electric jolt shooting up his arm.
He texts his sister one line, telling her he’s bailing early, not to wait up. She writes back a winking emoji and a line telling him she knew she’d get him out of the barn eventually, and he shoves his phone back in his pocket, rolling his eyes. He follows her beat up brown Subaru out of the parking lot, his truck window rolled all the way down, the warm summer air whipping through his hair, the faint stain of cheddar grease still on his flannel cuff. He turns up the Tom Petty playing on his radio, taps his boot on the dash, and smiles.
