Javi Mendez, 53, vintage snowmobile restorer, leaned against the chipped ice rail of the pop-up bar, half-wishing he’d told Ray to go to hell when he’d dragged him out to the town’s annual winter fest. Grease crusted under his fingernails, the kind that never fully scrubbed out even after three rounds of lava soap, and his beat-up Carhartt still smelled like two-stroke oil from the 1978 Ski-Doo he’d been tuning all afternoon. He hated small town events, hated the forced small talk, hated the way people always looked at him like he was one wrong comment away from breaking over Lori’s death four years prior. He’d spent most of the last half decade holed up in his two-bay shop outside Grand Rapids, only leaving for parts runs and the rare occasion Ray wouldn’t take no for an answer.
A shoulder brushed his, hard enough to make his beer slosh over the rim of the plastic cup onto his glove. He turned to snap, then went quiet. Elara Ruiz, 49, he realized, the little sister of his old high school rival, Rico. He’d not seen her in close to 25 years, not since she’d left for college in the Cities right after the big 1998 snowmobile race that had ended with him and Rico in a fistfight in the parking lot of the local VFW. He’d held a grudge against the entire Ruiz family for decades, convinced Rico had gotten away with cheating to try and beat him that day. She was wearing a puffy green parka lined with faux fur, cinnamon and pine wafting off her scarf, a streak of silver cutting through the dark hair pulled back in a messy braid. She held up her spiked cider in a half-apology, smirking like she knew exactly who he was and exactly how annoyed he was to be there.
“Still driving that beat-to-hell Ski-Doo you almost broke Rico’s jaw over?” she asked, leaning in so he could hear her over the Johnny Cash playing from the speakers strung between pine boughs. Her elbow brushed his bicep for half a second, warm even through his thick coat. He tensed, waiting for the lecture, the dig about how he’d overreacted, the same line every Ruiz had fed him for years. Instead, she laughed, a low, rough sound that fit the cold air. “For the record? I saw him snip your throttle line ten minutes before the race. Was 18, scared of his temper, never told anyone. He was an asshole. Still is, for what it’s worth.”
The grudge he’d carried for 25 years fizzled so fast he almost dropped his beer. He stared at her, and she held his eye, no smirk now, just a quiet sort of honesty he hadn’t seen from anyone outside of Lori in decades. He found himself telling her about the sled, about the full restoration he’d done last year, about the way it still hit 65 on packed snow like it was brand new. She leaned in as he talked, her knee brushing his under the rickety ice table they’d migrated to, her fingers tapping the side of her cider cup when he described the time he’d taken it up the north shore last winter and watched the sunrise over Lake Superior, ice stretching as far as the eye could see. She told him she’d moved back to town three months prior to take over her mom’s bookstore downtown, that she’d spent the last two decades working as a literary agent in Chicago, that she was sick of city traffic and people who didn’t know how to wave when they passed you on the road.
He caught himself staring at her hands, smudged with blue ink from stamping book spines, chipped red nail polish on the tips. She caught him, and winked, reaching across the table to tap the back of his hand, her fingers calloused from hauling boxes of hardcovers. “You gonna keep avoiding everyone forever, Javi?” she asked, soft enough that no one at the next table could hear. The question twisted in his chest, part shame, part something sharper, hotter, a feeling he’d buried so deep he’d forgotten it existed. For months he’d told himself dating again, even talking to another woman, was a betrayal of Lori, like he was throwing away 22 years of marriage for a cheap thrill. But Elara didn’t look at him like he was broken. She looked at him like he was a guy who restored old sleds, who’d won a race fair and square even when someone tried to cheat him, who was just as tired of being alone as she was.
She asked if he’d give her a ride on that Ski-Doo sometime, said she’d never ridden one, Rico had always told her girls didn’t belong on sleds. His first instinct was to say no, to make an excuse about parts runs, about work, about anything to run back to the quiet of his shop. Then she brushed her fingers against his wrist, light, just for a second, warm even through the frayed cuff of his Carhartt, and he said yes.
They made plans to meet at his shop at 10 a.m. Saturday, she’d bring coffee and donuts from the bakery on Main. She left a few minutes later, waving over her shoulder as she crunched across the snow to her pickup. Javi finished his beer, the cold nipping at his cheeks, but he didn’t feel as frozen as he had when he’d walked in an hour prior. He watched her taillights fade down the icy road, and lifted his half-empty beer cup in a quiet toast to the weekend.
