Manny Ruiz is 52, makes his living restoring vintage camping gear out of his two-car garage in east Bend, Oregon, and hasn’t so much as shared a coffee with a woman that wasn’t his daughter or granddaughter since his divorce finalized eight years ago. His biggest flaw, per his granddaughter Lila, who’s crashing with him for the summer before her sophomore year of college, is that he’s deliberately turned himself into a hermit who thinks all neighborhood social events are just excuses for bored retirees to swap bad medical stories. He only agrees to show up to the late August block party because Lila threatens to list his prized 1968 canvas wall tent on Facebook Marketplace for $20 if he bails.
He hovers by the taco truck parked at the end of the block for the first 45 minutes, nursing a cold Modelo, picking at a plate of carnitas tacos, avoiding eye contact with anyone who looks like they want to corner him to ask about his “cute little side hustle.” The air smells like grilled onions, citronella candles, and pine drifting down from the Deschutes National Forest a few miles out. The pavement still holds the day’s heat, seeping up through the soles of his scuffed work boots.
He’s halfway through debating if he can sneak out without Lila noticing when he spots Clara, his new next-door neighbor, leaning against a folding picnic table, laughing so hard at a retired teacher’s story about her cat knocking over a wedding cake that she snorts a little. She moved in three months ago, runs a mobile physical therapy practice for older adults across central Oregon, and they’ve only ever exchanged quick waves over the split-rail fence between their yards. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded 90s Patagonia tee with a hole at the elbow, and the same beat-up hiking boots he’s seen her wear on early morning trail runs. Her dark hair has streaks of sun-bleached gold at the ends, and there’s a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek, leftover from the fire pit she lit in her backyard two nights prior.
She catches him staring, grins, and pushes off the table to walk over. He panics for half a second, considers ducking behind the taco truck, but he’s too slow. She stops close enough that he can smell lavender hand lotion and the faint, sweet tang of the margarita she’s holding. “I’ve been meaning to corner you,” she says, nodding at the dented 1972 Coleman cooler he’d set on his front porch earlier that week to take photos for his Etsy shop. “My dad had that exact same cooler. We took it to Crater Lake every summer until I was 16, when my little brother dropped it off a dock and it sank.”
Manny finds himself rambling before he can stop himself, telling her he picked it up at a garage sale for five bucks, spent three hours sanding the rust off the hinges, replaced the rubber seal so it holds ice for three days straight. She leans in when he talks, her elbow brushing his bicep when she reaches for a napkin off the table next to them, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his work shirt. Part of him wants to make a dumb excuse about a half-finished tent repair waiting for him in the garage and bolt, the same way he has every time someone’s tried to get close to him after the divorce. He’s spent so long convincing himself casual connections are more trouble than they’re worth, that the risk of awkwardness or heartache isn’t worth the few minutes of good company, that the pull to stay right where he is feels almost wrong, like he’s breaking a rule he made for himself.
The sun dips below the Cascades as they talk, painting the sky pink and orange, and a group of teen kids from down the block set off a pack of cheap fireworks that fizz out halfway up, sending sparks raining down on the grass, and everyone groans loud enough to drown out the classic rock playing from a portable speaker on the curb. Clara leans in even closer, her mouth almost to his ear so he can hear her over the noise, her breath warm against the side of his neck. “I have a bottle of aged reposado tequila sitting on my kitchen counter,” she says, “and I’ve been dying to see your workshop. You gonna invite me over, or do I have to climb the fence later?”
Manny hesitates for half a beat, running through all the excuses he could pull out: he has an early hike planned the next morning, the garage is a mess, he’s too tired. None of them stick. He nods, grabbing his half-empty beer off the table.
They cut through the side yard between their houses, the grass still damp from the sprinklers that ran an hour earlier, and he unlocks the garage door, flipping on the string lights strung across the exposed ceiling. The space smells like canvas, mineral spirits, and the cedar he uses for tent poles. She steps inside, running her hand over the stack of fully restored sleeping bags stacked against the back wall, then turns to him, her fingers brushing the back of his hand where it’s resting on the edge of his workbench. He doesn’t move away when she leans in to kiss him, the faint taste of lime and tequila on her tongue mixing with the residual bitterness of his beer.
