Manny Ruiz, 59, has run a vintage camper restoration outfit out of a converted barn outside Asheville for 12 years, ever since he left Miami, his job fixing yacht engines, and a marriage that fizzled faster than cheap beer in the sun. His worst flaw is holding grudges longer than he holds onto the rare original Airstream parts he scours estate sales for, and for the last three months, his number one target has been the new county zoning administrator. He’d sent her seven angry emails, two formal letters, and ranted for 10 minutes straight at a public meeting, convinced she was trying to shut down his storage shed expansion and run him out of town. He’d pictured her as a stuffy, pantsuit-clad bureaucrat who’d never held a power tool in her life, so he nearly chokes on his chili when she walks up to him at the fire department’s annual cookoff, wearing scuffed Carhartts, a plaid flannel, and steel-toe boots, a bowl of chili piled high with pickled jalapenos in one hand.
He tries to duck behind the cooler of craft IPA his part-time employee dragged him to the cookoff with, but she spots him first, smirks, and cuts through the crowd of volunteer firefighters and local farmers before he can make a run for it. “Manny Ruiz, right?” she says, standing close enough that he can smell lavender lotion over the thick cumin and smoked paprika hanging in the crisp October air. “The guy who marked my work email as spam and called me a ‘pen-pushing tyrant’ in last month’s zoning meeting?” He flushes, scuffs his work boot on the crunch of fallen oak leaves, and mumbles an apology that comes out more like a grumble. She laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the chatter of the crowd, and says she actually amended the accessory structure ordinance two days prior, small rural home businesses get a pass on any sheds under 1200 square feet, she’d been trying to tell him for weeks but he’d blocked every one of her attempts to reach out.
He’s so flustered by being wrong that he offers her a beer before he thinks twice, and she takes it, sitting down next to him on the splintered pine picnic bench. Their knees brush when she shifts to set her chili bowl down, denim on denim, and he freezes for half a second before forcing himself to relax, like it’s no big deal. She asks about the 1961 Airstream he has parked by the road out front of his shop, she drove past last weekend with her rescue dog, and stopped to stare for five minutes because it’s the exact same model her grandparents used to take her camping in as a kid. He finds himself rambling about the water damage repair he’s doing, the custom lift he’s installing so the veteran client who bought it can get in and out easily with his service dog, and she leans in, elbows on the table, eyes bright in the glow of the string lights strung between the oak trees. He notices the tiny scar on her left cheek, the smattering of freckles across her nose, the calluses on the tips of her fingers when she passes him a packet of saltine crackers, their hands brushing long enough that he feels a jolt go up his arm, warm and unexpected.
She admits she does carpentry on the side, flipped three small cottages in the area before taking the zoning job, and bought a beat-up 1972 Starcraft pop-up camper for $300 a month back, but has no clue how to fix the water-damaged roof or rewire the 12-volt system. She’d been too scared to ask him for help, she says, because she thought he hated her guts. He’s just about to tell her he doesn’t hate her, that he was just being a stubborn idiot, when the fire department blares the siren to announce the chili contest winner. It’s so loud it vibrates in his molars, and she flinches hard, her shoulder slamming fully into his. He reaches out automatically, his hand wrapping around her upper arm to steady her, the fabric of her flannel soft and worn under his palm, and he can feel the solid muscle of her bicep under it. She doesn’t pull away, just looks up at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she smiles, and says “I really do need help with that camper, if you’re not too busy plotting against me.”
He laughs, shakes his head, and grabs a crumpled paper napkin from the stack on the table, wiping the chili grease off his thumb before scribbling his personal cell number on it, not the shop line, because he doesn’t want his 20-year-old employee answering and teasing him for weeks. She takes it, her fingers brushing his again, and tucks it into the breast pocket of her flannel, patting it once to make sure it’s secure. She says she has to head out, her pit bull mix is waiting in her truck, probably chewing through the seatbelt by now, and she waves over her shoulder as she walks across the gravel parking lot.
He watches her climb into her beat-up Ford F150, the back window plastered with dog rescue and national park stickers, and realizes he’s already clearing next Saturday’s schedule before she’s even turned the key in the ignition.
