Elio Ruiz is 57, makes his living restoring vintage neon signs for Austin dive bars and rich folks’ home game rooms, and hasn’t let himself flirt with anyone for 11 years, 4 months, and 17 days. He counts because the streak started the day his ex-wife loaded her SUV with their leather couch and her new boyfriend’s golf clubs and peeled out of his driveway. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few friends he still has, is that he holds grudges so tight they carve permanent dents in his palms. He’d spent that morning hauling his sign display to the Westlake farmers market, sweat sticking his faded San Antonio Spurs tee to his back, the air thick enough with cut grass and grilled sausage that he could almost taste it through his cotton bandana.
He was adjusting the wiring on a small neon “TACOS & TEQUILA” sign when he heard the laugh from the booth next to his, the one that had been empty the week prior. He looked up, and for half a second he thought he was seeing a ghost. The woman wiping flour off her forearm looked exactly like his old construction partner Ray, who’d fallen off a scaffold when they were framing a hotel downtown 18 years prior, except softer, curvier, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple. It took him three full seconds to place her: Lila, Ray’s daughter. He’d only seen her a handful of times since the funeral, when she was 16, sulking in the back of the church in a black Misfits tee, refusing to talk to anyone. Now she was 34, running a sourdough booth, and the way she smiled when she handed a customer a loaf of seeded bread made the back of his neck feel hot, which he immediately wrote off as the 94 degree July heat.
He avoided looking at her for the next hour, pretending to fiddle with loose wiring, re-pricing the same mini signs three times, until she walked over to his booth, wiping her hands on her linen apron, a paper plate with a peach scone held out in front of her. She said his name like she’d been practicing it, and when he reached out to take the plate, her knuckles brushed his. The touch was light, accidental, but it sent a jolt up his arm that settled low in his gut, and he had to fight the urge to yank his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. They talked for 10 minutes, about her bakery pop-up, about the 1970s motel sign he’d just finished restoring for a bar east of I-35, and he teased her about sneaking two beers out of their job site cooler when she was 16, lying and saying she was taking them to her mom. The whole time he kept thinking about how wrong this was, how he was old enough to be her dad, how Ray would roll over in his grave if he saw Elio staring at the way her sun dress rode up her thigh when she leaned against the edge of his booth.
He made an excuse to leave, mumbled something about needing to grab more bottled water from his truck, and hid in the cab for 15 minutes, sipping lukewarm water, calling himself every name in the book for even thinking about her that way. He considered packing up early, bailing on the rest of the market, until he heard a crash from the direction of his booth. He jumped out of the truck, and saw Lila on her knees on the asphalt, holding his custom “WHISKEY” neon sign that had been knocked over by a gust of wind, a dark, oozing scrape running down her left knee. She’d dived to catch it before it hit the concrete, she said, when he ran over to help her up.
He sat her on the folding chair behind his booth, knelt down in front of her, and pulled a beat-up first aid kit out of his tool bag. He dabbed antiseptic on the scrape, his other hand resting light on her calf to keep her still, and they were so close he could smell the vanilla lotion she was wearing under the scent of flour and ripe peach. Her knee was warm under his calloused palm, and when he looked up, she was staring right at him, no smile, no shyness, just clear, steady eye contact. She said she’d had a crush on him since she was 16, that she’d asked Ray about him all the time after he died, that she’d asked the market coordinator to put her booth next to his on purpose.
Elio froze, his hand still on her knee, every conflicting thought bouncing around his head at once. He wanted to kiss her, bad, wanted to taste the peach she’d been snacking on earlier, wanted to run his fingers through that braid. But he also felt sick to his stomach, like he was betraying the only friend he’d ever had, like he was taking advantage of someone he was supposed to protect. He said as much, voice rough, and she leaned forward, her hand coming to rest on his cheek, her thumb brushing the scar on his jaw that Ray had given him when they were messing around with a nail gun on a job site in 2004. She said Ray always said Elio was the only good man he’d ever known, that she was a grown woman who got to choose who she wanted to be with, that there was nothing wrong with this.
He kissed her then, slow, the low hum of the neon signs behind them mixing with the distant sound of a bluegrass band playing at the other end of the market, the sweat on both their skin sticking together a little where their faces touched. It didn’t feel wrong, for the first time all day. It felt like something he’d been waiting for without even knowing it.
They closed up their booths an hour early, him loading his signs into the bed of his beat-up Ford F-150, her tucking her unsold loaves into a cooler in the backseat of her minivan. She followed him back to his bungalow in her car, and when they walked through the side gate to his workshop, she stopped short, pointing at a half-finished neon script L he’d been messing with the night before, the one he’d had no reason for making, just liked the soft curve of it. She ran her finger along the cool glass tube, turning to grin at him, and said it would look perfect above the sink in her apartment.
