Manny Ruiz is 53, runs a custom boot shop off West 6th in Austin, and has skipped the annual fall street festival every year for eight straight. His wife Elena died in a car crash on their 20th anniversary coming home from that exact festival, so he’d locked himself in his workshop with a six pack of Lone Star and a stack of full-grain hide every October since, turning down every invitation from friends and regulars. The only reason he showed up this year was the leather supplier handing out free samples of bison hide, the thick, buttery stuff he usually can’t afford to splurge on for custom orders. His only flaw, if you ask anyone who knows him, is that he’s stubborn to a fault—refuses to use synthetic soles even when customers beg for waterproofing, won’t upgrade his 1998 Ford F-150 even though the AC died three summers back, won’t let anyone get close enough to ask how he’s really doing after losing Elena.
He’s sipping a spiked apple cider, flipping through a stack of hide swatches that smell like pine and tanned leather, when a warm hip bumps hard into his side. He almost spills the cider down his faded red flannel, until a small, calloused hand wraps around his wrist to steady the cup. He smells jasmine and burnt sugar first, then looks down to see Lena Marlow, the woman who opened the vintage lingerie shop two doors down from his boot store four months prior. He’d avoided her on purpose up until then—wrote her off as too loud, too bubbly, too much, the kind of person who’d yank him out of his carefully constructed, quiet routine if he let her. Her nails are painted deep burgundy, chipped at the edges from hauling inventory, and she’s wearing the scuffed pair of 90s Doc Martens he resoled for an anonymous drop off three weeks prior, the pair he’d spent an extra hour patching the toe of for free because the hole was so bad it had cut the wearer’s sock.
“Sorry about that,” she says, grinning, her eyes crinkling at the corners when she recognizes him. “I was chasing a golden retriever that stole my caramel apple, wasn’t looking where I was going. You’re Manny, right? The boot guy. I’ve been meaning to bring you a thank you for the resole—you didn’t leave a note, but I recognized your little sun stamp on the heel. You’re a hard man to track down, always have your ‘closed’ sign up even when I can see you in there singing old Selena songs through the half-drawn blinds.”
He feels his ears go hot. No one’s ever mentioned the singing before. He works alone, keeps the radio low, thought he was being quiet enough that no one could hear through the thick brick walls. He mumbles a gruff you’re welcome, and is about to make an excuse to leave when she tugs lightly at his sleeve, pointing at a food truck selling smoked brisket tacos that smell like mesquite and chili powder. “C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch to make up for almost making you dump cider all over yourself. I promise I don’t bite. Unless you ask.” She winks, and he feels his chest tighten, half sharp, familiar annoyance, half something he hasn’t felt in so long he can’t name it at first. It’s desire, warm and low in his gut, and he’s immediately disgusted with himself—he’d spent eight years swearing he’d never look at another woman that way, that Elena was the only one for him. But he follows her anyway, his work boots scuffing against the rain-damp asphalt scattered with crumpled maple leaves, and he doesn’t pull away when she leans into his arm to laugh at a juggler who just dropped three bowling pins straight on his own head.
They eat tacos sitting on a splintered wooden picnic bench, and she tells him about her 7-year-old foster son Javi, who loves dinosaurs and hates wearing socks even when it’s 40 degrees out, about how she opened the vintage shop because her mom used to sell lace slips at flea markets when she was a kid to pay the rent. He finds himself telling her about Elena, about the festival, about how he’s spent eight years scared to even walk down this block in October for fear of running into a memory he can’t handle. She doesn’t say the dumb pitying things most people say, doesn’t tell him it’s time to move on, just nods and passes him a crumpled napkin when a drop of taco grease drips on the knee of his worn jeans.
It starts drizzling halfway through their second round of Shiner Bock, and they run to huddle under a tiny awning outside a silver jewelry booth, their legs pressed tight together knee to knee, cold rain dripping off the brim of his well-worn cowboy hat onto her shoulder. She looks up at him, her eyelashes clumped with raindrops, and she reaches up to brush a wet strand of graying hair off his forehead. Her palm is rough from hauling boxes of vintage slips and corsets, and he doesn’t flinch away. “I knew you weren’t as much of a hard ass as you act,” she says, quiet, like she’s sharing a secret only the two of them are allowed to hear. “I saw you leave those tiny custom cowboy boots on my porch last month for Javi’s birthday. You didn’t leave a note, but again, that little sun stamp gave you away.”
He freezes. He’d dropped those off at 2 a.m., made sure the street was empty, thought he’d gotten away with it. He admits he’d been avoiding her for months because he thought he was too old, too stuck in his slow, quiet ways, too broken from losing Elena to even think about letting anyone else in. She laughs, soft and warm, and her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth, wiping away a speck of brisket rub he didn’t know was there. “I don’t care about any of that,” she says. “I like the guy who sings off key while he stitches soles, who makes free boots for kids who can’t afford them, who looks like he’s about to pass out every time I wink at him.”
The rain slows to a fine mist by the time they walk back to their block of storefronts, and she stops in front of her shop door, digging her brass keys out of her worn leather crossbody bag. She invites him in for spiked hot cocoa, says Javi’s at his grandma’s for the weekend so they don’t have to worry about him interrupting to show off his newest dinosaur figurine. He follows her across the threshold, and the first thing he sees is the pair of boots he resoled for her propped next to Javi’s tiny T-Rex rain boots by the entry mat, both of them sitting right next to a framed polaroid of Elena that he’d sold to a vintage vendor two years prior, the one he’d thought he’d lost forever when he cleared out their old photos after the crash. He reaches down to run his finger over the edge of the polaroid’s frame, and feels Lena’s warm hand settle lightly on his lower back.
