Rico Morales, 52, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a weathered cinder block building outside Bend, Oregon, for 17 years. His worst flaw is that he’d rather sand a rusted gas tank for 12 hours straight than ask for a hand with anything, a habit that drove his wife to pack her bags and leave 8 years prior, no note, just a half-empty coffee mug on the kitchen counter. He’s avoided all family gatherings tied to her side ever since, only showing up to community events when the fire department strongarms him into donating a free oil change as a raffle prize.
The fall chili cookoff is no exception. He’s wearing a faded flannel dotted with weld burns, his work boots caked in mud from hauling a 1968 Triumph he pulled out of a barn the week before, standing in line next to a table stacked with peach cobbler tins when someone’s elbow knocks into his side, cold lemonade sloshing over the rim of their cup and soaking the cuff of his sleeve.
He turns, ready to grumble, and stops. It’s Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who used to bring him homemade empanadas when he was working late on her mom’s pickup truck 10 years back, the one he’d stared at a beat too long during family Thanksgiving once and then spent three days kicking himself for it. She’s 38 now, wears a park ranger uniform, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with a single streak of silver at the temple. She laughs, holds up a crumpled napkin, and leans in close enough that he can smell pine soap on her skin and ripe peach on her breath, dabbing at the wet spot on his sleeve until the fabric is only damp. Her knuckle brushes the scar on his forearm he got when a kickstand gave out last winter, and he tenses, half out of habit, half out of the jolt that runs up his arm when her skin touches his.
She teases him about still wearing the same scuffed leather belt he had back then, about the fact that everyone in town says he hasn’t taken a day off in three years. He wants to make an excuse, say he’s got a bike to finish, that he has to get back to the shop, but she holds his eye contact, her brown eyes warm, no judgment, and asks if he wants to hike the new overlook trail on the ridge behind her ranger station after the cookoff wraps up. The voice in his head screams that it’s wrong, that she’s his ex’s family, that he’s going to regret letting anyone get close again, but he nods before he can talk himself out of it.
The hike is steeper than he expects, pine needles crunching under his boots, a hawk crying somewhere far above, his knees ache a little by the time they reach the top, but the view is worth it: the whole valley stretched out below them, pine trees glowing gold in the sunset, the distant snow-capped peak of Mount Bachelor peeking over the horizon. A gust of wind blows, and a strand of her braid catches on the zipper of his jacket, tangled tight. He leans in to untangle it, his face inches from hers, can feel her warm breath against his jaw, and when she doesn’t pull away, he kisses her, slow, tentative at first, until her hand comes up to rest on the back of his neck, pulling him closer. All the guilt, all the stupid rules he made for himself after his wife left, all the years he spent telling himself he didn’t deserve anything that didn’t involve grease and rust, melts away like wax under a torch.
They walk back down the trail as the sky turns dark, her hand brushing his every few steps, no awkward silence, no need to fill the space with small talk. She asks if she can see the 1972 Honda CB750 he’s been restoring on and off for two years, the one he’d only ever told one other person about. He says yes, unlocks the shop door, holds it open for her. The smell of gasoline and cedar polish and old leather hits them as they step inside, and he flicks on the string of fairy lights he hung above the workbench last month, something he’d never have admitted to anyone before. She walks over to the CB750, runs her hand along the polished gas tank, and smiles over her shoulder at him. He leans against the workbench, hands in his pockets, and tosses her the shop rag he keeps slung over his shoulder so she can wipe the polish smudge off her palm.
