Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage pinball machines out of the cinder block garage behind his East Austin bungalow. He’s lived alone since his wife left him for a travel blogger eight years prior, and his biggest personality flaw is that he will go to absurd lengths to avoid any interaction that doesn’t involve soldering irons, faulty circuit boards, or arguments with collectors on Facebook Marketplace over fair shipping rates. When his next door neighbor left a plate of pork tamales and a handwritten note begging him to show up to the annual block party for at least 20 minutes, he couldn’t say no. He owed her for calling the fire department last winter when his space heater shorted out while he was passed out on the couch after a 14 hour repair marathon.
The July heat sticks to his skin like plastic wrap when he steps onto the sidewalk at 6 PM, Shiner Bock in hand, wearing the faded AC/DC tee he sleeps in and frayed cargo shorts. The street is blocked off with orange construction barrels, kids screaming as they run through a slip n slide, the smell of charred bratwurst and cotton candy thick enough to taste. He leans against the trunk of a 100 year old oak, counts down the minutes until he can bolt back to his garage and finish working on the 1978 Space Invaders machine he’s prepping for a collector in Portland. He’s got 7 minutes left when he spots her.
She’s the new head librarian at the neighborhood branch, the one he dropped off a box of his ex-wife’s old 70s sci-fi paperbacks to two weeks prior. She’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, silver hoops glinting in the golden hour light, bare feet slapping the warm asphalt as she walks straight toward him. He freezes, half convinced he’s imagining it, until she stops half a foot away, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the spearmint gum she’s chewing. “Manny, right?” she says, grinning, and he’s pretty sure his brain short circuits for a full three seconds. “I wanted to thank you for those books. The middle schoolers that come in after school have been fighting over the Heinlein ones nonstop.”
He mumbles something about being happy to help, already mentally kicking himself for sounding like a flustered teenager. She swats a mosquito off her upper arm, her bare skin brushing his forearm in the process, and he feels a jolt shoot up his spine that he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old sneaking into his college girlfriend’s dorm after curfew. The logical part of his brain screams that he’s being an idiot, that she’s at least 10 years younger than him, that dating anyone in the neighborhood is a recipe for awkward run-ins at the grocery store for the rest of his life, that he’s far too out of practice to even attempt to flirt with anyone. But the other part of his brain, the part he’s been suppressing for eight years, is fixated on the way her sun-streaked hair falls over her shoulder, the way she laughs when a kid runs past squirting her with a water gun.
She asks if he has any more of those old paperbacks lying around, says she’ll swing by his place sometime to pick them up if that’s okay. He blurts out that he’s got the fully restored Space Invaders machine in his garage, too, if she’s ever interested in playing. Her eyes light up. “I’m terrible at pinball,” she says, leaning in a fraction of an inch, their shoulders now pressed together. “I’ve always wanted someone to teach me.” He gives her his address, even though she lives three blocks over and could look it up if she wanted, and she types it into her phone, her thumb brushing his when she hands it to him to put his number in.
She shows up the following Saturday at 2 PM, carrying a six pack of hazy IPA and a paper bag of chocolate chip cookies she baked herself. The garage is cool, shaded by the oak tree out front, the smell of solder and lemon Pledge hanging in the air, Tom Petty playing low on the vintage radio he keeps on the workbench. She stands in front of the Space Invaders machine, squinting at the flashing lights, and he steps behind her to show her how to hold the flipper buttons, his chest less than an inch from her back, his breath fanning over the top of her hair. He adjusts her grip on the side of the machine, his calloused hand covering hers for two slow beats, and she leans back into him slightly, no sign of pulling away.
She glances over her shoulder, her dark eyes bright, and says “I think I’m getting the hang of it” right as the machine dings, her score jumping 10,000 points. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t talk himself out of it like he has every other small, good thing that’s crossed his path in the last eight years. He tilts his head down and kisses her, slow, and she kisses him back, tasting like IPA and mint, one hand tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck. They pull apart after a minute, both grinning like idiots, and she turns back to the pinball machine, hitting the flipper so hard the whole cabinet shakes.
She beats him by 12,000 points three games later, and he teases her for lying about being terrible. She laughs, wiping sweat off her forehead, and says she’s definitely coming back next weekend for a rematch, plus she wants to see the half-restored Pac-Man machine he mentioned in the back corner. He nods, grabbing another beer out of the cooler for her, already looking forward to it. When she leaves that evening, she tucks a dog-eared copy of *Dune* into his hand, says it’s her favorite, he has to read it before she comes back. He stands in the driveway watching her car pull away, the book warm in his hand, until it turns the corner at the end of the block.
