Manny Ruiz is 52, runs a one-man vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of the back bay of his south Austin condo, and has spent the last seven years deliberately keeping his social circle small enough to count on one calloused hand. His ex-wife left for a job in Portland with a guy who sold craft CBD dog treats, and he’d walked away from that split deciding he’d rather argue with a seized carburetor than a partner ever again. He’s gruff, cuts small talk off at the knees if it doesn’t involve engine parts or Texas high school football, and most of his neighbors only talk to him when they need a jump for their dead truck battery.
He’s at the neighborhood food truck rally on a sticky June Thursday because he just finished a full frame-off restoration of a 1978 Honda CB750 for a client in Dallas, and he’s rewarding himself with a smoked brisket taco and a cold Shiner Bock. The mariachi band set up near the taco truck is playing so loud his boots vibrate a little against the asphalt, and the air smells like grilled elote, burnt ends, and cut grass from the nearby park. He’s halfway through his taco when he spots her waving, and his first instinct is to pretend he didn’t see her.
It’s Lila, the wife of the new condo board VP, the guy who’d cornered Manny two weeks prior to yell at him for parking his personal CB in the visitor spot for 20 minutes while he hauled a box of new spark plugs up to his unit. Manny had barely glanced at her that night, just noticed she was wearing pink converse under a linen sundress, and that she’d rolled her eyes when her husband started going on about “community property guidelines.”
She walks over before he can duck away, and she’s close enough that her bare shoulder brushes his bicep when she leans in to yell over the music. “Mark bailed on me, he’s still stuck in Cabo on that stupid sales trip, so I’m flying solo tonight. Mind if I hang?”
He nods, mutters something about there being enough space, and holds out a napkin when she grabs a carnitas taco from the tray she’s carrying. Her fingers brush his wrist when she takes it, and he can feel the cool press of a silver turquoise ring against his sun-warmed skin. He’s suddenly hyper aware that he’s wearing grease-stained work jeans and a faded Longhorns tee, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and jasmine perfume, the kind of scent that sticks to the back of your throat if you breathe in too deep.
They talk for 20 minutes, yelling over the band, and he’s surprised to find he doesn’t hate it. She laughs at his dumb joke about the condo board’s weird obsession with banning native wildflowers from the front landscaping, even though it’s not that funny, and she holds his eye contact longer than any casual acquaintance should, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners when he admits he once spent three days straight troubleshooting a 1969 Triumph just because he didn’t want to go to a mandatory board holiday party.
The conflict nags at him the whole time, a quiet voice in the back of his head saying this is a bad idea, she’s married, you don’t do this, you don’t get tangled up with people who have commitments you can’t compete with. But when she suggests they walk over to the park to get away from the noise, he doesn’t say no.
The park is quiet, the only sound crickets chirping and kids laughing a few hundred feet away at the bounce house set up near the playground. They sit on a weathered cedar bench, and she shifts closer so their knees knock together when she turns to face him. “I watch you work on your bikes in the parking garage sometimes,” she says, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear her. “Mark spends all his time staring at his laptop or yelling into his AirPods. It’s nice to see someone who actually makes things with their hands.”
She rests her hand on his knee, just above the frayed cuff of his jeans, and he doesn’t move it. The thrumming in his chest is so loud he can barely hear the crickets anymore, and the part of him that was disgusted at the thought of even flirting with a married woman an hour prior is completely gone, replaced by a warm, giddy excitement he thought he’d lost when his ex drove away. He tells her he hasn’t had a conversation this long that didn’t involve piston ratios or gasket seals in seven years, and she smiles, the corner of her mouth tucking up like she’s got a secret she’s not ready to share yet.
She pulls out her phone, swipes through her camera roll, and holds it up to show him a photo of a beat up 1981 Suzuki GS650, dented and covered in dust, parked in a storage unit. “My dad left it to me when he died last year. I don’t know the first thing about fixing bikes. I can pay you, obviously, but… I’d rather bring you my abuela’s beef empanadas every weekend we work on it, if that’s a better trade.”
He nods, pulls his own phone out to give her his personal cell number, not the business line he gives to random clients. She types it in, her thumb brushing the edge of his screen, and hits save. “I’ll text you first thing tomorrow,” she says, standing up and brushing grass off the back of her sundress. She leans in before he can say anything else, presses a soft, quick kiss to his cheek, her coral lipstick leaving a faint, warm stain he can feel tingling long after she steps back.
He watches her walk away, waving over her shoulder, until she turns the corner out of the park. He sits there for another 10 minutes, finishing his now-warm beer, wiping the faint lipstick mark off his cheek with the back of his hand and smiling to himself when he sees the faint coral smudge on his knuckle. He pulls out his phone, pulls up the list of parts he needs for his own personal Suzuki project, and adds an extra beginner’s tool set to the cart before hitting checkout.
