He freezes. Lila is 38, married to his former business partner, Cole, the guy who screwed him out of $12,000 on that botched Airstream restoration three years prior, the guy who’s spent every minute since talking trash about Javier’s work to anyone who’ll listen at local vintage swap meets. She’s holding a paper cup of spiced cider in one hand, a paper bag with two churros peeking out the top in the other, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a strand sticking to her pink wind-chapped cheek. She’s wearing high-waisted straight leg jeans and a cropped cream knit sweater, bare ankles peeking out above scuffed white sneakers even though the temperature dipped to 57 degrees an hour earlier. She grins, the same gap between her two front teeth he remembers from when she worked the barista shift at the coffee shop around the corner from his old shared shop, the one who used to slip him extra espresso shots in his cold brew before she started dating Cole.
He’s already halfway to a mumbled apology, ready to dart around her and pretend he never saw her, when she laughs, soft, and steps closer, close enough that he can smell the vanilla lotion she’s wearing under the faint tang of cider. “Don’t run,” she says, and he stops, his boots rooted to the crushed gravel. She holds out the paper bag, and when he reaches for it, their fingers brush, warm and calloused on both ends, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned. He’s disgusted with himself, first for even noticing how pretty she looks with the string lights catching the gold flecks in her eyes, second for even talking to her, knowing Cole would raise hell if he saw them standing 10 feet apart, let alone passing churros back and forth. A golf cart loaded with kids in half-finished Halloween costumes zips past, and she steps sideways to avoid it, her hip pressing firm against his, the heat of her seeping through both their layers, and she doesn’t move away for three full, quiet beats, her gaze locked on his, no awkward darting away, no fluster, like she’s been waiting to be this close to him for a long time.
He opens his mouth to say he can’t talk to her, that he doesn’t want any more trouble with Cole, when she leans in, her shoulder brushing his bicep, so her voice is low enough only he can hear over the band. “I left him two weeks ago,” she says, and he blinks, like he misheard her. “Filed the papers the day he left for that stupid elk hunting trip. I didn’t tell anyone around town because I knew he’d run his mouth to every restoration shop within 50 miles before I could lock you in to work on my Westfalia.” She pulls a crumpled napkin out of her jeans pocket, scribbled with a VIN number and an address, and holds it out to him. She found a beat up 1972 Volkswagen Westfalia in her elderly neighbor’s side yard, she says, has been saving up for it for two years, would never let anyone else touch it. She always loved how he treated every camper like it was something precious, she says, not just a paycheck, the way Cole always did.
The knot in his chest loosens so fast he feels lightheaded, the guilt and disgust he was feeling ten minutes earlier melting into something warm, something he hasn’t felt in so long he almost forgot what it was called. He takes the napkin from her, his thumb brushing the back of her hand, and this time he doesn’t pull away. They agree to meet at his shop the next morning at 9, she says she’ll bring the cold brew, the extra shot he likes, she still remembers his order. She tucks her hair behind her ear, grins again, and says she’ll let him get back to his spotter gig, doesn’t want to keep him from the burnt ends he’s got waiting.
