Rafe Mendoza, 52, has grease crusted under his fingernails that won’t wash out for three days no matter how hard he scrubs, occupational hazard of restoring vintage pinball machines for a living. He’s perched on a splintered picnic table at the town’s annual summer car show beer garden, sipping a hazy IPA that tastes more like citrus than beer, half-eaten brat slathered in sauerkraut sitting on a crumpled paper plate next to him. The air smells like grilled onions, campfire smoke from the fire pit near the bounce house, and faint diesel fumes from the hot rods idling up and down the main street. He’d spent four hours that afternoon patching a faulty flipper on a 1978 Space Invaders cabinet the event organizers had dragged out of a barn, and his lower back aches like a son of a bitch.
He’s halfway through debating if he wants to grab a second beer or head home to his quiet cottage on the edge of town when a woman drops her tote bag on the empty bench across from him, slides into the seat without asking. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Dolly Parton tour shirt, glitter flecked in her wavy dark hair, a gap between her front teeth he recognizes instantly. It’s Lila, his old high school buddy Jake’s daughter, the last time he saw her she was 12, showing up at his shop selling Girl Scout Thin Mints in a puffy neon coat. He blinks, does the math quick, she’s 38 now, all grown up, runs a vintage VW interior restoration business out of Portland, she says, in town for the show to scope out parts for a 1962 bus a client dropped off last month.
She leans in when she talks, elbows on the table, close enough he can smell coconut sunscreen mixed with the menthol of the vape pen she pulls out of her tote. Her knee knocks his under the table when she shifts to get more comfortable, and he flinches like he’s been burned, old guilt flaring. For eight years, ever since his ex wife left him for a 27 year old personal trainer, he’s avoided even the hint of anything with a woman more than five years younger than him, convinced it’s a cliché he’s too proud to fall into, that everyone would call him a sad old creep chasing youth to soothe his ego. He keeps glancing over at the group of his high school buddies three tables over, scared one of them will look over, start making jokes, call Jake over to chew him out for talking to his kid.
She teases him about still driving that beat up 1998 F150 he’d had since he was 28, the dent in the passenger door still there from when he crashed it into a mailbox after a senior year party. He teases her back about the time she snuck a sip of his beer at Jake’s 40th birthday party, spit it all over his work boots, got grounded for two weeks. When she reaches across the table to grab the mustard bottle, her forearm brushes his, warm through the thin cotton of his faded denim work shirt, and he doesn’t pull away. He notices the tiny tattoo of a VW logo on her wrist, the faint scar on her knuckle from when she fell off her bike when she was 10, he’d been the one who drove her to the ER that day, Jake was too drunk to get behind the wheel.
The conflict tugs at him, sharp and hot, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that he’s crossing a line he can’t uncross, the other half acutely aware of how her eyes stay locked on his when he talks, how she laughs at his bad jokes about pinball repair, how she doesn’t flinch when his knee brushes hers back under the table, intentional this time. She passes him a napkin when a drop of sauerkraut falls on his shirt, her fingers brushing his chest for half a second longer than necessary, and he feels his face heat up, like he’s 17 again, nervous to talk to the girl he had a crush on in homeroom.
It hits soft, no fanfare, when she leans in even closer, voice dropping so only he can hear over the noise of the band setting up near the stage. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, when he came to her dad’s house to fix a broken Addams Family pinball machine, had that same smudge of silver paint on his cheek he’s got right now, told her she could be whatever she wanted when she grew up, even if everyone told her working on cars was “for guys.” She reaches across the table, brushes the paint smudge off his cheek with her thumb, her skin warm against his stubble, and he doesn’t pull away. The noise of the beer garden fades to a hum for a second, all he can hear is her slow breathing, the faint crackle of the campfire. The guilt melts away, slow, he realizes this isn’t a cliché, isn’t him chasing something to fix his ego, it’s two people who’ve known each other for decades, finally on the same page.
He tells her he’s got a half-restored 1965 VW bus sitting in the back of his shop, bought it on a whim six months ago, has no clue what to do with the interior, could use an expert opinion. She grins, that same gap-toothed smile she had as a kid, stands up, slings her tote over her shoulder, says she’s free all night. He tosses his half-eaten brat in the trash, wipes the grease off his hands on the leg of his jeans, follows her across the gravel parking lot, the summer sun dipping pink and orange over the oak trees lining the street, as she holds the passenger door of her own mint green VW bus open for him.
