Javi Mendez, 52, vintage camper van restorer, spends 60 hours a week sanding rusted fiberglass and troubleshooting 1970s Volkswagen engines out of a weathered barn outside Portland, Oregon. His worst flaw? He’d rather re-caulk a leaky roof three times over than make small talk with strangers, a habit he picked up after his wife left him for a traveling wine salesman eight years prior. He’d only shown up to the neighborhood block party because his 16-year-old apprentice had begged him to bring his award-winning oak-smoked brisket, threatening to hide all his metric socket sets if he bailed last minute like he usually did.
He’s leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, half-empty IPA in one hand, condensation beading down the can onto his wrist, ignoring the third person that afternoon who’d asked for a free quote on restoring their grandma’s old Winnebago, when Lena Carter walks over. He recognizes her instantly: she’s the newly divorced ex-wife of his go-to auto parts supplier, the guy he’s placed 200+ orders with over the last decade. They’d exchanged half a dozen nods across the street since she moved into the blue ranch two doors down three months prior, never spoken a full sentence. She’s barefoot, her cheap foam sandals abandoned by the cornhole pit where a kid had tripped over them an hour earlier, wearing a faded 1990 Willie Nelson tour tee cut off at the elbows and frayed denim cutoffs dotted with grass stains. She holds a chipped ceramic plate piled high with peach cobbler in one hand, the crust still glistening with melted butter.
“Trade you,” she says, leaning in to set the plate on the picnic table next to his brisket tray, the soft cotton of her tee brushing his sun-warmed bicep when she moves. She smells like ripe peaches and the citronella candle burning on the table behind him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold when they lock onto his, darting to the thin scar across his left cheekbone he got restoring a 1972 Westfalia when a wrench slipped, then back to his mouth. He freezes for half a second, hasn’t felt that little electric jolt from an accidental touch since before his ex left.
He passes her a paper plate piled high with sliced brisket, pink and juicy, crusted with black pepper and oak smoke, his calloused fingers brushing hers when she takes it, and he feels his neck heat up like he’s 16 again fumbling through his first date. The psychological whiplash hits him hard: he knows messing with his main supplier’s ex is a terrible idea, could tank his 20% parts discount, start neighborhood drama he doesn’t have the energy for, but he can’t stop staring at the smattering of freckles across her nose, the way she snorts when he makes a joke about how the neighborhood association bought the cheapest, wobbliest cornhole sets on Amazon to save 20 bucks.
They talk for 45 minutes straight, leaning closer and closer as the crowd around them thins out, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifts. She tells him she’d left her ex because he’d refused to let her turn half their garage into a pottery studio, called her hobby a “waste of space.” He tells her he still sleeps on the couch in his barn half the week because the house he shared with his ex feels too quiet, too full of old memories he doesn’t want to unpack. When the weekly fire department siren blares for its 7 PM test, loud enough to make the picnic table rattle, she leans in so close her wavy auburn hair brushes his jaw, her hand resting warm on his forearm for ten full seconds while she yells a joke about how the siren always scares her two rescue tabbies under the bed. Neither of them moves to pull away.
He admits he’s wanted to talk to her since April, when he saw her hauling three heavy bags of potting soil up her driveway in a torrential rainstorm, her hair stuck to her face, laughing like she didn’t care she was soaked through to the skin. She grins, admits she’s been leaving containers of homemade pork tamales on his front porch twice a week for a month, never signed the handwritten notes because she was scared he’d tell her ex and he’d cut off his parts discount on purpose out of spite.
The sun dips below the oak trees lining the street, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine, and most of the neighbors have already packed up their coolers and folding chairs and headed home. She wipes a smudge of cobbler crumbs off her chin with the back of her hand, tilts her head at him, asks if he wants to bring the leftover brisket and cobbler back to her place, where she has a stack of old Spaghetti Westerns her ex always refused to watch with her and a fully stocked pottery studio in the garage he can look at if he wants.
He nods, grabs the two plastic containers of leftovers off the table, his hand brushing the small of her back when they step around a group of kids chasing each other with squirt guns, no one even glancing their way. She turns to smile at him over her shoulder, and he can hear the clink of her ceramic wind chimes through her open front door as they walk up her sloped gravel driveway.
