Manny Ruiz, 51, makes his living patching dents in vintage travel trailer aluminum and reupholstering faded dinette cushions for clients who drive in from as far as Texas to hire him. He’s spent the seven years since his wife left clinging to a rigid routine, convinced any deviation from his 6 a.m. shop start, 4 p.m. beer garden stop, 8 p.m. frozen dinner and old western marathon would unravel the quiet, uncomplicated life he’s cobbled together. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few friends he has left, is that he’d rather turn down a good time than risk even the smallest hint of conflict.
He’s wiping caked pine sawdust off the cuff of his plaid flannel when he slides onto the stool at the high top by the beer garden’s back fence, the late August sun just dipping behind the San Francisco Peaks, painting the sky the soft pink of a faded 1950s camping trailer decal. The air smells like fried cheese curds from the food truck parked by the entrance and pine resin, and the distant whistle of the Burlington Northern train rumbles low enough to feel in the soles of his work boots.
He’s two sips into his hazy IPA when a woman slides onto the stool next to him, her elbow brushing his bicep when she reaches to set her blackberry seltzer on the table. He glances over, and his throat goes tight. He’d recognize that dimple in her left cheek, that smattering of freckles across her nose, anywhere. It’s Lena, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d caught the bouquet at their wedding 12 years prior, who he hasn’t seen since the divorce papers were signed.
His first thought is to grab his beer and leave. His ex still badmouths him to every relative within a 300-mile radius, and getting caught talking to her cousin would spark a drama he has zero interest in wading through. But Lena leans in, grinning, and taps the fleck of sawdust stuck in his curly dark hair before he can move. “You’re the trailer guy, right? I saw your shop sign when I was dropping off children’s books out on the Navajo Nation last week. I had no idea you lived out here.”
She moved to Flagstaff three months prior to run the county’s rural library outreach program, she tells him, left Portland after her own divorce, sick of the rain and the constant passive-aggressive comments from her ex’s family. Their knees bump under the table when she shifts to watch a golden retriever trot past with a half-eaten pretzel in its mouth, and he doesn’t pull away. She passes him a paper napkin when he dribbles beer foam down his jaw, her fingers brushing the stubble on his chin for half a beat longer than necessary, and his skin tingles where she touched him.
He doesn’t mean to stay for a second drink, let alone a third. She smells like lavender and old paper, the kind of worn library binding he remembers from his childhood, and her laugh is softer than he remembers, no sharp edge like his ex’s, even when she’s teasing him about the fact that he still listens to the same old Tejano cassettes he was playing at the wedding. He tells her about the 1964 Airstream he’s restoring for a disabled Army vet who plans to drive it to every national park in the lower 48, and her eyes light up, leaning so close he can feel her breath on his wrist when she asks if she can come see it sometime.
For an hour he fights the pull, half his brain screaming that this is a terrible idea, that his ex will show up at his shop with a baseball bat if she finds out, that he’s just setting himself up for another heartbreak. The other half of his brain is fixated on the way her silver hoop earrings catch the glow of the string lights strung above the table, the way she tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear when she’s listening, the way she doesn’t flinch when his hand brushes hers when he reaches for his beer.
The food truck closes down, the last of the weekend crowd filters out, and he walks her to her beat-up Subaru parked under a ponderosa pine at the edge of the lot. The crickets are chirping so loud they drown out the jukebox playing inside the beer garden, and she stops before she opens her car door, tilting her head up at him. “I know you’re worried about what my cousin will say,” she says, so quiet he almost misses it. “I don’t care. I haven’t talked to her in three years, not since she sided with my ex when we split.”
She leans up and kisses him before he can respond, her hand on the back of his neck, her lips soft, tasting like blackberry and mint. He hesitates for half a second, then wraps one arm around her waist, pulling her closer, the rough fabric of her flannel shirt rubbing against his, and for the first time in seven years he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t worry about the consequences, doesn’t plan what he’ll do tomorrow.
When she pulls back, she scribbles her phone number on a crumpled library checkout receipt, shoves it in the pocket of his flannel, and tells him to pick her up at 10 a.m. Saturday to show her the Airstream. He stands there leaning against the pine tree long after she drives off, the receipt crinkling under his fingers when he pulls it out to make sure it’s real. The train whistle rumbles again, loud this time, as it passes the edge of town, and he tucks the receipt back in his pocket, wipes the last of the sawdust off his cheek, and heads for his truck.
