Manny Ruiz, 53, spent most of the last 12 years covered in sawdust, holed up in his two-car garage turned woodshop outside Columbus, Ohio. A retired high school woodshop teacher, he’d walked away from the district the year his ex-wife left him for a BMW salesman, trading rowdy freshmen with splinters for custom cutting boards, charcuterie platters, and the rare custom birdhouse for neighbors who bothered to knock. His biggest flaw, the one his late dad used to nag him about, was holding a grudge so tight his knuckles turned white: he’d skipped every family gathering, every community event, every casual date his sister tried to set up, convinced anyone his age was only after his quiet, low-stakes retirement savings or a free custom furniture build. He’d only signed up for the local fall craft fair because his garage was overflowing with finished stock, and the $250 booth fee was too cheap to pass up.
The morning air bit at his cheeks when he hauled his first crate of walnut and maple boards to his booth at 8 a.m., sipping burnt gas station coffee that tasted like charred cardboard and regret. He’d just set out his sample of beeswax wood conditioner when he glanced at the booth next to his, and his throat went dry. Clara Marlow, his ex-wife’s 10-years-younger cousin, was hauling crates of glass jam jars onto a folding table, her chestnut hair pulled back in a loose braid, a streak of silver at her temple catching the weak October sun. He remembered her from his wedding, 18 years prior: 22, wild curls, a gap-toothed smile, slipping him a crumpled note with her phone number after the reception that he’d thrown in the trash without a second thought, still stupidly in love with his wife.
He considered packing up and leaving right then, even with the nonrefundable booth fee, but the first wave of customers started trickling in before he could grab the first crate. He helped a retiree pick out a maple board engraved with his grandkid’s names, helped a young couple pick a charcuterie platter for their first Thanksgiving together, and all the while he could feel Clara’s eyes on him, warm and steady over the heads of the crowd. When the lull hit at 11 a.m., she leaned over the two-foot gap between their booths, her flannel sleeve brushing his bicep when she reached for the sample of wood conditioner he’d set on the edge of the table. The heat of her arm seeped through his own flannel, and he caught a whiff of her perfume: cinnamon and crisp apple, matching the spiced apple jam she had set out for sampling. “Manny Ruiz, I knew that was you,” she said, grinning, her gap tooth still there, a little freckle under her left eye he’d forgotten about. “Your beard’s grayer, but you still look like the guy who burned the turkey at the 2017 family Thanksgiving.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. They talked between customers for the rest of the day: she told him she’d left her alcoholic husband two years prior, moved back to town to take care of her mom who’d had a stroke, started the jam business out of her kitchen to make extra cash. He told her about the woodshop, about the fishing trips he took up to Lake Erie every other weekend, about how he’d avoided every event that might have his ex in attendance for a decade. When a group of mutual family friends walked by at 3 p.m., they glanced at the two of them laughing, raised their eyebrows, and whispered to each other as they walked away. Manny tensed immediately, pulling his arm back from where it had been resting against the booth edge, inches from hers. “We shouldn’t be talking like this,” he said, quiet. “Your cousin will hear about it, she’ll raise hell. You know how she is.”
Clara rolled her eyes, popping a cube of bread dipped in peach jam into her mouth. “Since when do you care what that woman thinks? She didn’t care about you when she drove off with that guy in his stupid BMW, leaving you with a half-empty house and a stack of medical bills from her knee surgery.” The words stung, but they were true, and Manny found he couldn’t argue with her.
The fair wrapped up at 6 p.m., the sky fading to dark purple, string lights strung across the fairgrounds flickering on. She dropped a case of jam jars while she was loading her car, the glass clinking loud, and Manny bent down to help her pick them up. Their hands brushed when they both reached for the same jar of peach jam, the skin of her palm soft against his calloused, sawdust-dusted fingers. He looked up, and she was inches from his face, her grin gone, her eyes soft. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 22, Manny,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
He hesitated for half a second, the voice in his head screaming that this was a bad idea, that his ex would lose her mind, that this would end just as badly as his marriage did. Then he leaned in, kissed her, soft at first, then deeper when she tangled her hand in the hair at the back of his neck. He could taste peach jam on her lips, sweet and warm, and he didn’t care if any of the remaining vendors were watching, didn’t care what his ex would say when she heard.
They loaded the last of his stock into his beat-up Ford F150 first, then the last of her jam jars into her Subaru. She told him she had a bottle of 10-year bourbon on her kitchen counter, and a fresh loaf of sourdough she’d baked that morning, that they could test out one of his walnut cutting boards and a few of her jams if he wanted to come over. He nodded, grabbing the nicest unengraved walnut board he had in the bed of his truck to bring with him. He turned on his blinker to follow her onto the side road leading to her house, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a smile he hadn’t felt in 12 years.
