Rudy Galvez is 53, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a cinder-block barn 20 minutes outside Boise, and has not attended a single Ada County summer craft fair since his ex-wife left him for a real estate agent in 2011. His worst flaw is holding grudges so tight his shoulders ache most nights, refusing to engage with anything that even smells like his old married life, even if his only regular social interaction outside of drop-in customers is talking to his 10-year-old coonhound Mabel while he sands aluminum siding. His buddy Terry drags him to the fair this year, begging for an extra set of eyes to vet a custom welded hitch he’s been eyeing for his 1972 Airstream, and Rudy caves because Terry helped him pull a rotted floor out of a 1964 Avion last month, and he owes him.
The fair smells like fried Oreos, cut grass, and sweat, the asphalt sticking to the soles of his scuffed work boots in the 90-degree heat. They wander past handmade jewelry booths, a homemade jam stand lined with mason jars glowing pink and amber in the sun, Terry stopping every three minutes to chat with someone he knows from the local camping club, Rudy half paying attention, scrolling through parts listings on his phone when Terry veers off toward the food row saying he needs a pre-beer snack. Rudy stops dead when he sees who’s running the salsa booth.
It’s Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger sister. He hasn’t seen her since 2010, back when she was a mouthy 19-year-old college sophomore who’d crash his and his ex’s house every other weekend, raid his beer fridge, and make fun of him for spending every Saturday under the hood of some old trailer. She’s 33 now, sun-streaked dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a faded Willie Nelson tank top slung over her shoulders, a smudge of roasted tomato on her left cheek. She looks up from stirring a batch of mango habanero, freezes for half a second, then grins so wide the dimples in her cheeks pop.
She leans over the rough pine booth, holding out a corn chip loaded with salsa, and when he reaches to take it their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, a little sticky from handling plastic sample cups, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, cheeks hot even under the sun. He’s always had a stupid, off-limits crush on her back when he was married, the kind he’d never admit to anyone, the kind that made him stay up an extra hour fixing her beat-up Honda Civic when it broke down senior year, that made him lie to his ex and say he didn’t mind when she ate the last of his favorite brisket leftovers.
He tastes the salsa, the heat of the habanero curling up the back of his throat, sweet mango cutting it just right. She teases him, says she remembered he hates cilantro so that batch is cilantro-free, that she’d heard he was still in the area fixing up trailers, had been half hoping she’d run into him. She leans in closer when she talks, close enough he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint tang of hard seltzer on her breath, can see the tiny gold flecks in her dark brown eyes, the thin scar above her left eyebrow from when she crashed his four-wheeler out in the Owyhee foothills in 2009. He’d driven her to the ER that night, lied to his ex and said she’d tripped over a rock so she wouldn’t get in trouble for taking the four-wheeler without permission.
A bee buzzes near his shoulder, and she swats it away fast, her palm brushing the bare skin of his bicep, calloused from weeks of sanding aluminum and tightening bolts. He flinches again, and she laughs, loud and bright, over the hum of the nearby Ferris wheel. She says she just moved back to Boise last month, got divorced from a guy in Portland who hated camping, bought a beat-up 1968 Scotty Camper off Craigslist that’s rotting from the floor up, has no clue how to fix it. She says she was going to call him, but she thought he’d hang up on her the second he heard her name, figured he still hated everyone tied to his ex.
That’s the part that trips him up. He’s spent 12 years holding that grudge, acting like every person who ever knew his ex is the enemy, even though Lila was the only one who called him after the split to say his ex was being an idiot, that he deserved better. He’d ignored that call, deleted the voicemail without listening to the whole thing, too wrapped up in being angry to think straight.
She bites her lower lip, looks down at her scuffed cowboy boots for a second, then asks if he wants to grab a beer at the dive bar down the road once the fair closes at 8. Says she’ll even buy, if he promises to give her a quote on fixing the Scotty, maybe let her hang around the barn sometime to help with the work, learn the ropes.
Rudy glances over at Terry, who’s over at the lemonade stand making googly eyes at the woman running it, clearly not planning on leaving anytime soon. He looks back at Lila, the sun catching the silver hoop earring in her left ear, the tomato smudge still on her cheek, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the tight, angry knot in his chest when he thinks about his old married life. He just feels light, a little giddy, the same way he felt back when he was 20 and first bought his own trailer and drove out to the coast alone for a week, no plan, no deadlines.
He says yes. She grins again, grabs a crumpled paper napkin from under the counter, scribbles her cell number on it in blue ballpoint, dabs a little bit of salsa on the corner by accident when she hands it over. He tucks it into the pocket of his flannel work shirt, right next to the folded list of trailer parts he needs to order next week.
He walks Terry back to his truck an hour later, the sun dipping low over the foothills, painting the sky pink and tangerine. Mabel is curled up on the passenger seat of his own truck, snoring, a half-eaten bag of peanuts Terry gave her at her feet. He pulls the napkin out of his pocket, runs his thumb over the smudge of salsa, and taps out a text that he’ll meet her at the bar in 20 minutes.
