Manny Ruiz, 53, has made a living restoring vintage travel trailers out of his tin barn in the Texas Hill Country for eight years, ever since his divorce finalized and he fled Houston for the quiet of a three-acre plot dotted with live oaks. His flaw is a bone-deep cynicism he picked up after his ex-wife cleaned out his bank account and ran off with a real estate broker he’d considered a friend; he assumes every friendly smile from a stranger comes with a hidden ask, and he’s turned down more dinner invitations than he can count, preferring the company of rusted aluminum frames and old country radio to small talk.
He’s at his usual corner table at the weekly VFW fish fry on a humid Friday in late May, plastic plate heaped with crumbed catfish and hush puppies, sweet tea sweating in a styrofoam cup, when he spots her. Elara Hale, 43, wife of the county commissioner who won re-election three weeks prior on a strict “family values” platform that included calling Manny’s side gig selling vintage pinup posters at the farmers market “a public nuisance that erodes local decency.” He’s only ever seen her in frumpy wool sweater sets and knee-length skirts, glued to her husband’s side at town halls, smiling the tight, blank smile of someone who’s practiced it in the mirror for hours. Today she’s in high-waisted straight leg jeans, a soft white ribbed tank top, hair loose from its usual bun, sunburn pink across the bridge of her nose, scuffed white sneakers on her feet.
She scans the crowded room, spots the only empty seat across from him, and walks over, holding a paper plate with a single slice of cherry pie and a glass of iced hibiscus tea. “Mind if I sit? Every other table’s packed and I’m starving,” she says, and Manny shrugs, nodding, already assuming she’s here to hit him up for a free trailer restoration for her husband’s upcoming silent auction. He says nothing, stabs a piece of catfish with his plastic fork, crunches into it, the salt and grease hitting his tongue the way it always does after a 12-hour day sanding aluminum.
She sits, leans across the table to grab the bottle of Tabasco sitting next to his elbow, and her bare forearm brushes his. He can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet scent of jasmine perfume, and he freezes for half a second, hasn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t trying to sell him lumber or propane in years. She doesn’t seem to notice, dabs hot sauce on her pie, takes a bite, and laughs when she catches him staring. “Don’t judge. My grandma always put hot sauce on fruit pie, I never grew out of it,” she says, and Manny snorts, a real laugh, the kind he doesn’t let out much these days.
They talk for 45 minutes, first about the terrible quality of the fish fry’s coleslaw, then about the stack of 1950s western novels he dropped off at the town library two weeks prior, found tucked under a seat in a 1962 Airstream he was restoring. She’s the head librarian, he remembers, and she gushes about how she’d read every single one of those books as a kid, how her mom used to hide them from her because she thought they were “too violent for a little girl.” She complains that her husband has spent every night since the election at campaign fundraisers in Austin, hasn’t asked her how her day was in six months, that she snuck out to the fish fry because no one who reports back to him would be caught dead here, not after he called the VFW’s weekly poker games “a breeding ground for vice.”
The sky outside darkens fast, the way Texas storms do, and within 10 minutes rain is lashing against the metal siding of the VFW hall, thunder rumbling so loud it shakes the windows. Everyone grabs their things and bolts for their cars, and Manny offers to walk her to her SUV, parked next to his beat-up Ford F-150 in the gravel lot. They run through the rain, and she slips on a patch of wet gravel halfway, her arms flailing, and he catches her around the waist, his palm pressing to the small of her back, her wet tank top clinging to her skin, the rain plastering her hair to her cheeks.
They’re six inches apart, rain dripping off the brim of his faded Astros ball cap onto her sunburned nose, and for a second he’s sure he’s misreading the moment, that she’s going to pull away and call him a creep, that her husband will put out a press release calling for him to be run out of town. Then she leans in, her hand curling around the back of his neck, and kisses him, the kiss tasting like cherry pie and hibiscus tea and rain, and he kisses her back, forgetting every cynical thought he’s had in the last eight years, forgetting who her husband is, forgetting every reason he ever told himself to keep people at arm’s length.
They pull apart when a car honks as it pulls out of the lot, both laughing, breathless, rain soaking through their shirts. She tucks a strand of wet hair behind her ear, pulls a crumpled fish fry receipt out of her jeans pocket, scribbles her cell number on the back in blue ballpoint, and tucks it into the breast pocket of his oil-stained Carhartt, her fingers brushing the skin of his chest through the thin fabric. “My husband’s at a conference in Austin all next weekend,” she says, “You mentioned you’re restoring a 1972 Scotty trailer out at your place. I’m pretty good with a paint roller. Bring extra sweet tea.”
She turns, climbs into her SUV, waves as she pulls out of the lot, taillights fading into the rain. Manny stands there for another minute, the rain soaking through his jeans, pulls the receipt out of his pocket, stares at the messy handwriting for a second before tucking it back, safe. He unlocks his truck, climbs in, turns the key, and Merle Haggard’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” crackles over the radio, and he turns it up, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, pulling out of the lot toward home.
