Manny Ruiz is 51, runs a vintage travel trailer restoration shop out of a converted barn outside Silverton, Oregon, and hasn’t let anyone set up a permanent toothbrush in his bathroom since his wife left for a wine salesman from Walla Walla eight years prior. His biggest flaw is that he’d rather take the blame for a mess than watch someone else get hurt, a quirk that cost him his business partnership and most of his casual friends six years back, when he lied and said he’d embezzled cash from the shop to cover for his partner, who’d blown the money on gambling debts to keep his ex-wife and kid from losing their house. He’d never told anyone the truth, even when the partner’s ex-wife Lila cornered him at the grocery store and called him a thief loud enough for half the produce section to stare.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden post at the town harvest festival beer tent when it happens, holding a cold hazy sour that’s starting to sweat through the paper coaster, half-watching the bluegrass band pluck through a cover of *Folsom Prison Blues*. Someone slams into his left side hard enough to slosh half their drink down his gray plaid flannel sleeve, sticky and spiced with cinnamon and apple. He turns to snap, and it’s Lila, her dark curly hair pulled back with a bandana printed with sunflowers, a half-empty plastic cup of cider in her hand, her cheeks pink from the 50-degree fall air.
She leans in immediately, grabbing a crumpled napkin from her jeans pocket to dab at the wet spot on his arm, her face inches from his chest, and he can smell the cedar perfume she wears, mixed with the faint tang of peat from the bonfire down the block and the dry wheat stuck to the hem of her jacket. Her fingers brush the scar across his left knuckle, the one he got changing a flat tire on her old Subaru when the three of them went camping at Silver Falls back in 2018, and she freezes for half a second, her eyes flicking up to meet his. There’s the usual sharp anger he’s gotten used to, then it softens, like she’s just remembered where that scar came from.
They end up perched on a hay bale at the edge of the tent, far enough away from the crowd that no one’s paying them much mind, and she tells him she found out the truth last week, when her ex showed up drunk to her plant nursery begging for more money, slurring the whole story about the gambling debts and how Manny had taken the fall to protect her and their 10-year-old daughter. She’s embarrassed, she says, she spent three years talking shit about him at every book club and PTA meeting she went to, and she feels like an idiot. He shrugs, says it’s fine, he’s used to people thinking the worst of him.
The bluegrass band switches to a slower track, and a group of teens runs past yelling, chasing a golden retriever with a corn cob stuck in its mouth, and she shifts closer to him to get out of the way, her denim-clad knee brushing his for three full seconds before she pulls back. He hands her a salted peanut from the paper bag he grabbed at the snack stand, and their fingers brush when she takes it, a little static shock that makes both of them huff a laugh. He tells her about the 1972 Airstream he’s restoring right now, how he found a family of raccoons living in the overhead cabinets when he pried the door open, and she snorts so hard she snorts cider out of her nose, wiping her face with the back of her hand, laughing so hard her shoulders shake. He hasn’t made someone laugh like that in years.
He knows he should leave. Everyone in town still talks about the embezzlement, still thinks he’s a crook, and if anyone sees him hanging out with Lila, the rumors will spiral so fast they’ll be saying they’ve been sleeping together for years before the end of the night. He’s disgusted with himself for even sitting here, for noticing how the streetlight hits the gold flecks in her brown eyes, for wanting to tuck the stray curl that’s fallen in her face behind her ear. He’s spent eight years building a quiet, drama-free life, fixing trailers and drinking beer alone on his porch every night, and he doesn’t need to mess that up for some stupid, long-buried attraction he thought he’d killed off years ago.
She asks him if he wants to walk back to her nursery, says she has a bottle of bourbon stashed under the counter that’s better than the sour he’s drinking, and he hesitates for ten full seconds, his throat tight, weighing the gossip against the warm, buzzing feeling in his chest that he hasn’t felt since he was in his 20s. He nods.
The walk is two blocks long, the festival noise fading behind them, crickets chirping in the grass along the sidewalk, the air sharp with the smell of fallen maple leaves. She unlocks the gate to the nursery, and the smell of damp potting soil and chrysanthemums hits him the second they step inside, string lights strung between the palm fronds casting warm gold light over the rows of plants. She leans in before he can say anything, her hand on the back of his neck, her lips soft against his, tasting like cider and cinnamon and the mint gum she chews. He kisses her back, his calloused hands resting light on her waist, not pulling away, not overthinking it for the first time in years.
They pull back after a minute, both of them a little breathless, and she grins, says she’s wanted to do that since the camping trip, when he carried her daughter across the creek so she wouldn’t get her sneakers wet. He laughs, says he’s been avoiding it because he’s a coward who hates town drama more than he hates the raccoons that keep getting into his garbage. He glances over at her workbench, sees a half-finished concrete planter set inside a beat-up old trailer wheel hub, and points to it, says he has a dozen of those sitting in his shop, taking up space, if she wants them. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, licks the residual cider off her lower lip, and says she’ll be at his shop at 9 a.m. sharp the next day, no excuses.
