Javi Mendez, 52, makes his living sanding rust out of 1960s Ford and Chevy pickups, turning piles of sun-bleached scrap into six-figure showpieces for collectors who’d never know how to adjust a carburetor if it bit them on the ass. He’s stubborn as the mesquite trees lining his 10-acre property outside Lockhart, hasn’t voluntarily attended a town event since his wife packed her bags and moved to Portland eight years prior, and still has a draft of a scathing, unsent email to the town council saved in his phone from three months back, when they voted to raise his shop’s property tax by 12 percent. The only reason he’s at the annual fall festival now is his 19-year-old part-time helper practically begged him to enter their freshly restored 1967 F-100 in the car show, promised he’d man the booth for 90 percent of the day so Javi could hide in the back with a spiked apple cider and avoid small talk.
The cider’s just starting to warm his chest when he spots her walking toward him, high-waisted jeans tucked into scuffed work boots, red flannel tied around her waist, golden hair pulled back in a loose braid strung with a stray piece of hay. It’s Lila Hart, the council member whose name was at the top of that tax hike vote list. His jaw tightens automatically, half ready to tell her to get lost before she opens her mouth. She stops two feet from the truck’s chrome front bumper, eyes going wide, and lets out a low whistle. “I knew this was yours,” she says, leaning in to run a finger along the polished candy-apple red fender, the breeze carrying the scent of lavender hand soap and roasted pecans off her oversized cream sweater. “I drive past your shop twice a week, always see the lights on late, figured you were buried under some engine or another.” Her hand brushes his when she reaches for the door handle to get a look at the custom tooled leather interior, warm, calloused, like she works with her hands too, and he flinches a little before he can stop himself.
She laughs, pulls her hand back, holds it up in mock surrender. “I know you’re mad about the tax vote,” she says, leaning her hip against the fender so their shoulders are barely an inch apart, the heat of her arm seeping through his worn denim shirt. “I get it. If it was up to me, we’d slash the mayor’s bloated travel budget instead of hitting small businesses. But the other option was cutting the senior center’s meal delivery program, and 17 people on my side of town rely on those meals to eat. I didn’t have a choice.” She takes a bite of the caramel apple she’s holding, the crunch loud over the sound of the bluegrass band playing a hundred feet away, and a fleck of sticky caramel sticks to her lower lip. He stares at it for two full seconds before he realizes he’s doing it, heat creeping up the back of his neck.
They talk for 20 minutes, and he learns she runs a small horse rescue on the side, fixes fence posts and hauls 50-pound hay bales herself when she’s not stuck in three-hour council meetings, hates the town’s annual pumpkin pie contest as much as he does because the judge always picks his sister-in-law’s entry no matter how burnt it is. A group of kids runs past chasing a slobbery golden retriever, and she stumbles a little, her knee bumping hard against his, doesn’t step back when she steadies herself with a hand on his forearm. Her eyes are light brown, flecked with gold, and she holds eye contact when he talks about the work he does, no polite half-listening nods, no checking her phone, asks follow-up questions about urethane paint and small-block engine swaps like she actually cares what he has to say.
The sky opens up out of nowhere, fat cold raindrops pouring down, everyone around them scrambling for cover under pop-up tents or sprinting for their cars. She shivers a little, her sweater soaked through at the shoulders, and admits she walked to the festival from her farm half a mile down the road, didn’t check the weather forecast before she left. He offers her a ride before he can think better of it. The truck’s heater kicks on as he pulls out of the parking lot, warming the cab, filling it with the smell of old leather and the pine air freshener he keeps hanging from the rearview. She reaches over to turn the radio up when a Johnny Cash deep cut comes on, her hand brushing the top of his thigh for half a second, and both of them freeze. He glances over at her, she’s already looking at him, no embarrassment, no awkward look away, just a small, slow smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
He pulls into her gravel driveway ten minutes later, the rain letting up to a soft drizzle that glows pink in the sunset, and she doesn’t reach for the door handle right away. “I have that small business tax rebate form you’ve been hounding the council for on my kitchen counter,” she says, her voice lower than it was before, warm through the hum of the idling engine. “You wanna come in for a beer while I grab it? I also have a 1972 C10 rotting in my barn that I’ve been trying to find someone to restore for a year. I’ll even cover parts upfront.” He nods, kills the engine, reaches for the door handle, pauses when her fingers wrap around his wrist, soft, deliberate, no accident this time.
