Manny Rios, 62, vintage travel trailer restorer and 22-year Army Corps of Engineers veteran, leaned against the dented bed of his 1998 Ford F-150, twisting the cap off a Shiner Bock while his beagle Mabel snuffled at a discarded corn cob in the dust. He’d shown up to the Hill Country town’s Fourth of July street dance only because his buddy had begged him to bring extra ice for the beer tent, and he’d planned to slip out before the slow songs started, before the local busybodies could corner him to ask why he still hadn’t “put himself out there” eight years after his wife left him for an Austin-based realtor half his age. His biggest flaw, he’d admit if he was drunk enough, was that he cared way more about what the gossips at the downtown diner thought than he ever let on, even when he pretended their whispers didn’t land.
The sun still hung low enough to burn the back of his neck when she stepped into the shade beside his truck, scuffed leather cowboy boots kicking up a tiny cloud of red dirt. He recognized her immediately: Clara Bennett, 58, the county public health officer everyone in town still side-eyed for enforcing mask mandates at local grocery stores and restaurants back in 2021. Half the town still called her “the lockdown lady” under their breath, and Manny had gone along with the jokes more than once, if only to fit in with his coffee crew. She held a half-empty can of lime seltzer in one hand, a thin scar snaking up her left wrist from a horse riding accident she’d had as a teen, and her dark hair was pulled back in a loose braid that had come half undone at the ends. “Mind if I hang here a minute?” she said, nodding at the empty spot on the truck bed beside him. “Every other patch of shade is full of people who’d rather spit at me than say hello.”
Manny almost told her to move along. He didn’t need the whole town talking about him consorting with the woman they blamed for missing their grandkids’ birthday parties two years back. But Mabel had lifted her head, tail thumping against the dirt, and he sighed, jerking his chin at the spot. She sat down so close their shoulders brushed, and he caught a whiff of lavender shampoo and cedar soap over the smell of grilled sausage and fireworks smoke hanging in the air. When she leaned forward to scratch Mabel behind the ears, her knee knocked against his, and he felt a tiny jolt shoot up his spine, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 19 and slow dancing with his first girlfriend at a high school homecoming.
They talked about nothing at first, the weather, the terrible cover band butchering Willie Nelson songs, the way Mabel kept stealing bits of popcorn from a kid walking past. She brought up the row of half-restored Airstreams in his front yard, said she drove past his shop every morning on her way to the county health department, had been eyeing the 1964 Overlander he’d been working on since March. Manny was so surprised he almost spilled his beer. He’d pegged her for a bureaucrat who only cared about spreadsheets and fines, not the difference between an original aluminum rivet and a cheap hardware store replacement. He teased her about the mask rules, and she laughed, throwing her head back, and pointed out she’d seen him wearing a KN95 at the feed store during the worst of the Omicron surge, when he was picking up medicine for Mabel’s kennel cough, so he wasn’t as much of an anti-rule rebel as he pretended.
He fought the urge to lean in closer, disgusted with himself for even liking being around her, for not caring that the group of guys from his weekly coffee group were staring at him from across the street, nudging each other. He’d spent eight years avoiding any kind of romantic attention, convinced it wasn’t worth the hassle, the judgment, the risk of getting hurt again. But she was listening when he talked about the work he did, asking questions about how he matched original paint colors, how he fixed the old propane fridges that came in the 60s models, not just nodding and zoning out like most people did when he started talking about trailers. When he pulled an extra cold Shiner from the cooler under the truck bed and handed it to her, their fingers brushed, and her skin was soft, warm, and he had to look away for a second to catch his breath.
The band switched to a slow George Strait track, the kind everyone in town knew the words to, and couples started drifting toward the makeshift dance floor strung with fairy lights. She turned to him, one eyebrow raised, and held out her hand. “You dance, Manny Rios?” He almost said no, almost made an excuse about his bad knee, about Mabel not liking crowds. But he stood up, wiped the dust off his jeans, and took her hand. Her palm was calloused at the edges, from riding horses, she told him later, and when he rested his other hand on her waist, he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin faded denim dress she was wearing. They swayed slow, close enough that their foreheads almost brushed, and the noise of the crowd, the fireworks popping over the lake a mile away, the gossip, all of it faded to a hum. She told him she’d been wanting to talk to him for three months, had almost stopped by his shop half a dozen times, but was scared he’d turn her away like everyone else in town had. He admitted he’d noticed her car slowing down outside his shop, had thought she was coming to cite him for some dumb code violation about unregistered vehicles in his yard, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, quiet, against his shoulder.
The song ended right as the first big firework burst over the lake, painting the sky pink and gold, and she stepped back, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She told him she had a beat-up 1962 Aloha trailer sitting in the garage of the house she’d bought on the edge of town, couldn’t get the water pump running no matter what she tried, asked if he’d come take a look at it the next afternoon. Said she’d make brisket tacos and frozen margaritas, enough for Mabel too, if he wanted to bring her along. He nodded before she even finished talking, didn’t even glance over at the coffee group guys who were definitely going to give him hell about it the next morning.
He walked her to her beat-up Subaru Outback parked at the end of the block, Mabel trotting between them, and she leaned in before she got in, pressing a quick, warm kiss to his stubbled cheek. She scribbled her address on a crumpled napkin from her purse, pressed it into his hand, and drove off, waving out the window. He stood there for a minute, staring at the napkin in his hand, the faint taste of her lime seltzer still lingering on his lips from when she’d passed him her can to try a sip earlier. He tucked the napkin into the front pocket of his worn work shirt, kneeled to scratch Mabel behind the ears, and didn’t even glance at the gossiping group by the beer tent when he turned to head for his own truck.
