Manny Rios, 53, vintage camper restoration specialist, had spent the last eight years perfecting the art of avoiding unnecessary human interaction. His divorce had left him cynical enough that he’d drive 22 minutes out of his way to skip the annual neighborhood block party, and he’d rather spend a Saturday stripping sealant off a 1972 Airstream’s aluminum hull than make small talk with anyone who didn’t know the difference between a vintage shore power cord and a modern knockoff. The only reason he was at the county summer craft fair at 2 p.m. on an 87-degree Saturday was that his 19-year-old niece had begged him to man her resin art booth for 20 minutes while she ran to the porta-potty line.
The air reeked of fried dough, cut fescue, and sputtering citronella torches that did almost nothing to hold off the mosquitoes swarming the tree line at the fairground’s edge. He was leaned up against the booth’s metal support pole, grease-stained Carhartt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, work boots caked with sawdust, when he felt something warm brush his left forearm.
He turned. The woman running the hot sauce booth two feet to his left was Lena Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. He’d not seen her since the messy final Thanksgiving dinner before his divorce, when she’d slipped him a piece of pecan pie under the table after his ex had spent 45 minutes yelling at him for forgetting to bring the cranberry sauce. She was 47, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single silver strand at the temple, wearing a cutoff tank top that showed the faint scar on her left shoulder from a 4-wheeler crash she’d had when she was 22, the same scar he’d stared at for too long that Thanksgiving when she’d reached across the table to pass the mashed potatoes.
His first instinct was to mumble a greeting and pretend to be busy rearranging his niece’s resin coasters. That was the rule, after all: anyone connected to his ex was off limits, a reminder of a part of his life he’d spent years scrubbing clean. But then she grinned, the same lopsided smile that had made him fumble his beer bottle at that 2018 holiday, and didn’t pull her arm away from where it was still pressed to his.
“Still wearing that beat up Carhartt?” she said, nodding at the faint white paint stain on his chest he’d gotten working on a 1968 Winnebago last spring. “I’d recognize that thing anywhere.”
He laughed, surprised. “Still making hot sauce so hot it sends people to the ER?” he said, nodding at the stack of warning labels taped to the front of her booth table.
She held up a small sample cup, the red liquid inside shimmering, and held it out to him. When he reached for it, their fingers brushed for half a second, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the 120-volt power cord he’d shocked himself with earlier that week. He took a sip, and it burned just right, a slow, smoky heat that settled in his chest instead of searing his tongue off.
A group of drunk teens on golf carts roared past the row of booths, kicking up a cloud of dust, and she leaned in closer to avoid getting hit, her shoulder pressing firm to his for three full seconds. He could smell coconut sunscreen and fermented habanero on her, and he didn’t move away. He found out she’d gotten divorced three years prior, ran a small pepper farm two towns over, came to the fair every year and always scanned the crowd for his niece’s booth, just in case he’d tagged along. He admitted he drove past her farm stand on his way to his shop at least twice a week, slowing down just to see if she was outside tending to her pepper rows, wearing the same floppy straw hat she had on now.
A sharp gust of wind picked up, blowing a stack of her custom hot sauce labels off the table and scattering them across the grass. They both bent down at the same time to grab them, their heads bumping soft, and they both laughed, loud enough that a couple walking past glanced over. When they stood up, a piece of oak leaf was stuck in her braid, and he reached up without thinking to brush it away, his thumb brushing her cheek on the way down. She leaned into the touch, her eyes dark, and didn’t say anything for a long beat.
His niece came trotting back right then, holding a plastic cup of lemonade, and Lena stepped back, grinning, and grabbed a small unlabeled jar of hot sauce off the table behind her, shoving it into his hand. “Special reserve,” she said, winking, before turning to help a customer who’d wandered up to her booth.
He didn’t look at the jar until he was back in his shop an hour later, the Airstream’s hull propped up on jacks in the bay. He twisted the lid off, and a folded napkin fell out, tucked under the seal, her phone number scrawled in blue ink across the paper, along with a note: I know a quiet campground 15 minutes north of town with empty spots you can test that Airstream at, if you don’t mind company.
He sat down on his workbench, wiped the grease off his hands on his jeans, pulled his flip phone out of his pocket, and typed the number in, hitting call before he could talk himself out of it.
