Javi Mendez, 59, has restored 72 vintage campers in the eight years since his wife left him for a solar sales rep with a perfect credit score and a seven-day-a-week golf habit. He runs his shop out of a cinder block garage three blocks from his bungalow in West Asheville, spends most days covered in resin and rust dust, and has a hard rule he hasn’t broken once in seven years: no dating, and definitely no dating anyone who lives within a five-block radius. He’d watched too many of his friends fumble through Tinder dates that ended in awkward breakfasts and neighborhood gossip, decided the whole thing was sad, more trouble than it was worth.
He’s standing in line for brisket tacos at the neighborhood food truck rally in mid-August, sweat sticking the collar of his faded Pearl Jam tee to his neck, plastic cup of IPA sweating in his hand, when he smells lavender. It cuts through the smell of charcoal and grilled corn and the sweet sticky cotton candy the teens by the playground are waving around, and when he turns his head, she’s standing six inches away, the new neighbor he’d helped carry a box of vintage linens to her porch three days prior. She’s wearing a linen dress dotted with sunflowers, mint green nail polish chipped at the edges, a tiny sewing machine tattoo curling around her left forearm. She’s holding a cup of peach iced tea, and when she smiles, the corner of her mouth tugs up higher on the left.
He learns her name is Lena, she’s 54, she runs a vintage textile pop-up out of a beat-up 1972 Volkswagen bus, she moved to Asheville from Savannah after her kid graduated high school and joined the Navy. She complains about the rust eating through the undercarriage of her bus, says every mechanic she’s talked to has quoted her a price so high she might as well scrap the whole thing, and he opens his mouth before he can think, says he’ll fix it for half the going rate, no rush. She shakes her head, says she’ll pay full price, and she’ll bring him homemade beef empanadas every week he’s working on it, his choice of filling. He feels his neck heat up, can’t remember the last time he had a home cooked meal that wasn’t a frozen burrito he’d microwaved at the shop.
She reaches for the extra napkin he’s crumpling in his fist, and her fingers brush his. It’s not static, the air is thick and hot enough that static doesn’t stick, but he feels a jolt run up his arm all the same, pulls his hand back like he’s touched a hot exhaust pipe. He mumbles an apology, and she laughs, the sound bright over the band, says she doesn’t bite, not unless he asks nicely. He freezes for half a second, then laughs too, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. He keeps telling himself this is just neighborly, he’s not breaking his rule, he’s just doing a favor for someone who lives down the street, but he can’t stop staring at the way the string lights strung above the stage catch the tiny silver hoops in her ears, can’t stop noticing how her knee brushes his when she shifts her weight on the picnic bench.
The band switches to “Free Fallin’” and half the crowd starts singing along, off key and loud, and she grabs his wrist, pulls him a little closer, says she hasn’t heard this song live since she was 19, at a festival outside Atlanta, she’d snuck in with a fake ID and slept in the back of her friend’s Camaro for three days. He doesn’t pull his wrist away. He looks down at her, and her eyes are bright, the string lights reflecting in them like tiny stars, and he realizes the disgust he’d expected to feel at himself, at the idea of breaking his stupid self-imposed rule, isn’t there at all. He just feels light, like he’s been carrying a toolbox full of cinder blocks around for eight years and someone just took it off his shoulders.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop after the rally, says he just finished restoring a 1968 Airstream for a couple in Portland, put in a built-in record player that works perfectly, he’s got a stack of old Tom Petty records he hasn’t played in months. She nods, grinning, says she’d love that, adds she’s got a stack of old soul records in her front closet she’s been meaning to break out, she can bring them over tomorrow if he’s not busy. He says he’s not busy, not for that.
They finish their tacos, the grease soaking through the paper wrappers onto the picnic table, and he carries both their empty cups to the trash can, her iced tea cup sticky with peach syrup against his palm. They walk toward his shop, the gravel crunching under his work boots, her elbow brushing his every few steps, the sky turning soft pink and orange at the edges, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the sidewalk. He pulls the shop gate open, holds it for her, and she steps inside, turning to grin at him over her shoulder, the faint glow of the shop’s neon open sign painting the edges of her hair pink.
