He’s wiping pine sap off a petrified wood inlay knob when a shadow falls over the table. He looks up, and it’s Clara Bennett, the new county librarian who moved to town three months prior, the woman half the town has been side-eyeing ever since someone leaked that she left her 20-year marriage for a female graduate student she’d worked with at the Denver Public Library system. Rico’s avoided talking to her until now, not because he buys the gossip, but because he doesn’t want to give Mabel Henderson, his nosy next door neighbor who’s currently manning the pie sale booth 10 feet away, any more ammo to chatter about over Sunday brunch. She’s holding a jar of pickled okra she won at the cake walk, a smudge of cherry snow cone syrup glistening on her jaw, cutoff jean shorts showing off a scar snaking up her left calf, a faded Dolly Parton tour shirt stretched tight over her shoulders.
She leans in to get a closer look at the petrified wood knob, her bare shoulder brushing his, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and mint gum. “You make these yourself?” she asks, picking up the knob, turning it over in her hand, her knuckles brushing his when she passes him a pickled okra from her jar unprompted. He nods, chewing the okra, the brine tangy and sharp on his tongue, his gaze darting over to Mabel, who’s staring right at them, a lemon meringue pie halfway in her hand. He’s torn. He likes the way she laughs when he tells her he digs the petrified wood up on solo hikes in the Uncompahgre National Forest, likes that she teases him about the “I Brake for Stray Dogs and Fast Motorcycles” sticker on the toolbox he’s propped under the table, hates that he’s wasting energy worrying about what Mabel or anyone else will say. She tells him she bought a beat-up 1978 Honda CB750 off a 19 year old kid down the street two weeks prior, has no clue how to get it running, has been asking around for someone who knows their way around old bikes without charging her an arm and a leg.
He opens his mouth to say he’s too busy, that he’s got three bikes to finish before the end of the month, when she leans past him to grab a walnut shift knob with a horseshoe inlay, her hip pressing firm against his, her hair brushing his cheek. Their eyes lock for three long seconds, and he notices the tiny silver hoop through her left nostril, the faint scar above her eyebrow, the way her pupils are dilated even in the bright midday sun. “I crashed a dirt bike when I was 16,” she says, tapping the scar, like she can read his mind. “Tried to jump a ditch I had no business even riding near.” He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t pulled out in years, and before he can overthink it, he wipes the cherry snow cone syrup off her jaw with the back of his calloused hand. She doesn’t flinch, just smiles, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side.
He tells her he’s got a spare carburetor for that exact CB model sitting on a shelf in his shop, that he can swing by her place after the fair wraps up at 7, that he’ll bring a six pack of the Mexican lager he keeps in his shop fridge. She grins, pulls a napkin out of her back pocket, scribbles her address on it in neon pink ink, tucks it into the front pocket of his oil-stained work pants, her fingers brushing the soft skin of his waist just above his belt line. “Don’t be late,” she says, turning to walk away, waving the jar of okra over her shoulder as she heads toward the snow cone stand.
