Manny Ruiz, 52, has run his custom motorcycle upholstery shop out of his East Austin garage for 16 years, his palms crisscrossed with staple gun scars, his nails perpetually stained dark brown from leather dye. He’s avoided the neighborhood summer block party every year since his wife left him for a commercial real estate agent eight years prior, but his 19-year-old niece begged him to show up this time—she’s selling her abuela’s beef empanadas to raise money for community college tuition, and she needed extra hands to carry coolers. He’d agreed only under the condition he could stand in the back by the chain link fence, drink cheap lager, and not have to make small talk with anyone he didn’t already know.
The air smells like charred hamburgers, cut St. Augustine grass, and the sugary syrup from the snow cone stand at the end of the block. Kids scream as they slip down a plastic sheet strung between two oak trees, their bare feet slapping the wet pavement. Manny leans back against the fence, the metal warm from three hours of Texas sun, and twists the top off his third beer of the afternoon. He’s half considering bailing early when a woman steps into his line of sight, holding a paper plate stacked with two empanadas.
It’s Clara, his new next-door neighbor, the one who moved in three weeks prior with her husband, a software salesman who’s out of town more often than he’s home. She’s wearing a faded yellow sundress dotted with tiny sunflowers, scuffed white tennis shoes, no makeup, a sparrow tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her dress at her wrist. She holds up the plate and grins, and Manny notices the faint lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes, the streak of silver in her dark brown hair that she hasn’t bothered to dye. “Your niece said these are your favorite,” she says, stepping closer, and Manny smells coconut sunscreen and lavender laundry detergent on her when she’s within arm’s reach.
He nods, takes the plate, and when their fingers brush, he feels a jolt run up his arm, sharp and warm, like he touched a live wire. He’s spent eight years intentionally avoiding any contact that isn’t strictly transactional, any conversation that doesn’t revolve around seat stitching or leather grade, and for half a second he wants to mumble a thank you and walk away. But she doesn’t leave. She leans against the fence next to him, her shoulder pressed light to his bicep, when a neighbor rides by on a loud riding mower, drowning out the sound of the country music playing from a portable speaker on the sidewalk. “I saw the bikes through your fence the other day,” she says, leaning in closer so he can hear her, her breath warm against the side of his neck. “My dad restored old Harleys when I was a kid. I haven’t seen anyone do that kind of work in years.”
Manny finds himself talking before he can stop himself, telling her about the 1978 Super Glide he’s rebuilding for a client in Dallas, the time he messed up a custom alligator seat and had to redo the whole thing three times, the way the leather smells when it’s fresh out of the tannery. She laughs at his story about accidentally dyeing his entire left arm neon orange last spring, and when she laughs she tilts her head back, and Manny can’t look away. She reaches for the beer he’s holding, her knuckles brushing his scarred palm when she takes it to read the label, and she holds his gaze the whole time, no awkward look away, no polite smile to break the tension. “My husband’s in San Francisco for the next month,” she says, setting the beer back down in his hand, her fingers lingering on his wrist for a beat longer than necessary. “I’ve been bored out of my mind. No one around here talks about anything but HOA meetings and their kids’ soccer games. Would you mind showing me your shop sometime?”
Manny’s chest tightens. He knows what this is, knows the line he’s one step away from crossing, knows that messing with a married next-door neighbor is the kind of stupid mistake he hasn’t made since he was in his 20s. He wants to say no, wants to make up an excuse about being swamped with work, wants to go home and lock his door and pretend this conversation never happened. But he looks at her, at the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, at the sparrow tattoo on her wrist that matches the one his dad used to have on his arm, and he can’t. “Come over at nine,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “I’ll leave the side gate unlocked.”
She grins, bright and unapologetic, and gives his forearm a quick squeeze before she pushes off the fence. She walks back toward the group of women she was sitting with earlier, and halfway there she looks over her shoulder, catches him staring, and winks. Manny takes a long sip of his beer, the cold liquid burning the back of his throat, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the heavy, hollow ache in his chest that he’s gotten used to carrying around.
