Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage slot machines out of the cinder block garage behind his Grand Junction, Colorado, home, and has not willingly attended a town community event since his ex-wife left him for a retired park ranger eight years prior. His most infuriating flaw, per his childhood best friend Javi, is that he can never say no when Javi calls in a favor. Javi had begged him to donate a fully restored 1978 Pac-Man themed slot as the top raffle prize for the annual summer rib cookoff, and Manny had caved faster than he cared to admit. He’d showed up an hour early, planned to drop the machine, grab a free beer, and bolt before any of the local gossips could corner him to ask when he’d “finally get back out there.”
He was halfway through his second Coors Light, turning to head for the exit, when he slammed straight into a woman carrying a seltzer water. The liquid sloshed over the rim of her cup, spotting the front of her cream linen button-down just above the waistband. He froze, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in his jeans pocket, his calloused, grease-stained hand brushing the soft curve of her hip when he leaned in to dab at the wet spot before he thought better of it. He expected her to jerk back, to scold him, but she only laughed, a warm, throaty sound that cut through the din of country music and rib smokers around them. Her hazel eyes, flecked with bright green, held his for three full beats longer than polite convention allowed, and she swatted playfully at his wrist when he kept apologizing. “Relax,” she said. “I’ve spilled worse on this shirt. I’m Lena. Just took over as county librarian last month.”
Manny stumbled through introducing himself, suddenly hyper-aware of the grease under his fingernails, the faded slot machine branded tee he was wearing, the fact that he hadn’t had a real conversation with a woman he found attractive in almost a decade. Part of him screamed to leave right then, to avoid the inevitable awkwardness, the inevitable whispers that would spread through town by Monday if anyone saw them talking for too long. He’d spent years building his quiet, predictable routine: wake up at 6, work on machines until 5, eat a frozen burrito for dinner, watch old westerns until he fell asleep. Disrupting that felt like a betrayal of the safe, uncomplicated life he’d built after his heart got broken. But when Lena’s name was called an hour later as the winner of the Pac-Man slot machine, and she tracked him down across the fairgrounds, grinning and holding the giant raffle ticket over her head, he couldn’t find it in him to make an excuse when she asked him to come over her place the following Saturday to show her how to do basic maintenance on it. “I’ll buy the six pack,” she said, her shoulder brushing his as she leaned in to be heard over the crowd. “And I make a mean pulled pork slider, if you’re hungry.”
He showed up at her bungalow 10 minutes early, a pack of his favorite IPA in one hand, a small toolkit for the slot machine in the other. The front door was propped open, Johnny Cash’s *At Folsom Prison* playing low on a record player inside, the air smelling like cinnamon and smoked pork. She led him to the sunroom, where the slot machine was already set up next to a worn velvet couch, and they sat side by side for 45 minutes, going over how to unjam the coin slot, how to replace the light bulbs behind the display, how to calibrate the lever so it didn’t stick. His knee pressed against hers the whole time, neither of them moving away, and when they both reached for the dog-eared user manual on the coffee table at the same time, their hands brushed.
The silence stretched for two heartbeats. Manny didn’t overthink it, didn’t talk himself out of it like he’d done a hundred times before. He leaned in, kissed her slow, the taste of lemon seltzer and cherry lip balm on her lips, and she kissed him back, her hand resting light on the side of his neck. When they pulled away, she laughed softly, tracing the faint scar on his jaw he’d gotten falling off a dirt bike when he was 16. “I thought you were gonna bolt the second I asked you to come over,” she said. He smiled, for the first time in longer than he could remember, and shook his head. She nodded toward the living room, where a stack of old John Wayne DVDs sat next to the TV. “I got a stack of westerns,” she said. “Wanna stay for the first one?”
He reached for the cold IPA she’d set on the coffee table, his knee brushing hers again as he shifted further into the couch, and nodded.
