Manny Ruiz, 53, runs a vintage camper restoration shop out of a weathered red barn 12 miles outside Boise, lives in a finished 1964 Shasta he fixed up himself behind the shop. He makes a point to be in The Rusty Hitch every Thursday night for $2 carnitas and $3 draft beer, no exceptions. He’s got a rule against taking local jobs, avoids small town chatter like he avoids rusted undercarriages that crumble when you so much as tap them with a wrench, hasn’t let anyone besides his part-time assistant step foot in his workshop unaccompanied since his ex-wife left him for a cross-country cycling instructor eight years prior. That night, the bar’s louder than usual, a crew of road construction workers yelling over a jukebox playing 90s country, so when the woman he’s never seen before walks in, she has nowhere to sit but the stool directly to his left, six inches away instead of the three feet he usually demands as personal space.
She’s got rain dotted across the shoulders of her thrifted flannel, a canvas tote slung over her arm printed with a giant library card, scuffed white hiking boots caked with mud from the foothills. She orders a frozen margarita, and when the bartender slides it across the wet Formica bar top, it sloshes over the rim, splattering cold tequila and lime across Manny’s bare forearm, still sticky from penetrating oil he’d been rubbing into a rusted Airstream wheel well an hour earlier. She flinches, immediately yanking a crumpled paper napkin from her tote, leaning in to dab at the spill before he can protest. He tenses up first, old reflex kicking in to pull away from unwanted touch, but then he catches the scent of lavender hand lotion on her wrists, hears her soft, embarrassed laugh when she says she still hasn’t gotten the hang of how rowdy this place gets on taco nights, and he freezes, doesn’t move back.
She introduces herself as Lila, the new part-time youth services librarian in town, moved here three weeks prior to help take care of her dad, who’s recovering from a stroke. She’s been asking around for someone who can fix up the beat-up 1968 Winnebago her dad left parked in his side yard for 20 years, plans to turn it into a mobile pop-up library for kids who live too far out in the county to make it to the main branch twice a month. Manny’s first instinct is to lie, say he’s booked solid for the next seven months, that he doesn’t take small local jobs, but then she pulls her phone out of her tote to show him photos of the Winnebago, shifts on her stool so her knee brushes his under the bar, and he feels the heat of her jeans through his worn Carhartts, his ears going pink under the brim of his faded “Shasta Club” baseball cap.
The conflicting feelings hit him so hard he has to take a long sip of his beer to cover it. Half of him is disgusted, angry that he’s even considering breaking his own rules for a stranger he met 10 minutes ago, that he’s letting a pretty smile and a story about kids and books make him forget how bad it hurt when his ex packed up her boxes and drove off with his favorite drill set and half his savings. The other half is curious, hungry for the way she’s holding eye contact like she’s actually listening when he rambles about the difference between original Winnebago paneling and the cheap reproduction stuff they sell online, like she doesn’t think his job is just a weird hobby for a guy who never grew out of playing with cars. When she leans in closer to point at a photo of the Winnebago’s cracked dashboard, her wavy brown hair brushes his cheek, smells like rain and citrus shampoo, and he can’t remember the last time someone was that close to him on purpose.
She asks if he can come look at the Winnebago the next morning, says she’ll make pot roast breakfast tacos and cold brew, her dad will be at physical therapy until 11 so they’ll have the yard to themselves no awkward small talk with a sick old guy. For half a second he’s ready to make an excuse, say he has a client flying in from Seattle to check on their Airstream restoration, but then she twists the little silver sparrow ring on her index finger, grins like she already knows he’s going to say yes, and he agrees. He types his number into her phone, their fingers brushing when she takes it back, and he feels a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt since he was 19, sneaking into his high school girlfriend’s parents’ basement after her dad fell asleep in front of the TV.
She leaves 10 minutes later, says she has to get home to let her border collie out, waves at him from the door, the rain stopped while they were talking, a pale pink sunset streaking the sky over the bar’s gravel parking lot. He sits there for another 20 minutes, finishes his beer, stares at the faint lavender smudge still on his forearm where she dabbed the margarita spill. He pulls out his phone, texts her his address just in case she gets lost driving out to his shop if she needs to follow him to her dad’s place, then opens his calendar app and deletes the small side job he’d booked for Saturday, the one he’d agreed to do for his cousin’s freeloading friend, so he has extra time to work on the Winnebago if it’s in worse shape than the photos make it look. He tucks his phone back into his pocket, flags down the bartender for another beer, and lets himself smile for the first time all week.
