A laugh cuts through the noise, sharp and familiar, and he looks up to see a woman in cutoff denim and a faded Willie Nelson tee walking straight toward him, silver hoop earrings glinting in the golden hour sun. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila, the daughter of his old high school buddy Ray, who he hasn’t seen since Ray moved to Denver 15 years prior. She’s 28 now, nothing like the braces-clad 13 year old he used to take camping on the Guadalupe River back when he was still married, and when she stops a foot away, he can smell the sour cherry seltzer in her plastic cup, can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose that she’s had since she was a kid. She leans in to hug him, and her shoulder brushes his bare forearm when she pulls back, the heat of her skin lingering even after she steps away to yell over the music that her dad told her to look him up if she was ever in town for her graphic design conference.
He buys her another seltzer, and they lean against the picnic table talking for 45 minutes, the crowd swirling around them. She tells him she’s been saving up for two years to buy a vintage van of her own to road trip out west, and he feels that stupid, familiar spark in his chest when she rambles about the custom murals she wants to paint on the side, the fold out dog bed she wants to build for her rescue pit bull. He kicks himself for it immediately, scolding himself for even noticing the way her lip curls when she laughs, for liking that she teases him about the faded Ford truck hat he’s had since 2005. This is Ray’s kid, for Christ’s sake, he tells himself. You’re old enough to be her dad. The thought makes his skin crawl a little, makes him want to cut the conversation short and go home to his quiet house and his old westerns, but when she asks if she can see the Westfalia he was talking about, he agrees before he can talk himself out of it.
The walk to his shop is 10 minutes down a tree-lined side street, the noise of the festival fading behind them. The shop is cool when he unlocks the roll up door, smelling like WD-40, wood stain, and the peppermint gum he chews nonstop when he’s working. He flicks on the string lights strung above the Westfalia, and pulls the back door open to show her the custom cedar cabinets he sanded by hand, the solar powered mini fridge he installed under the counter, the memory foam fold out bed tucked in the back. She leans past him to run her fingers over the grain of the cabinet wood, and her hip presses firm against his, her hair brushing his jaw when she tilts her head to get a better look at the storage cubbies he built above the bed. When she turns to face him, they’re so close he can feel her breath on his neck, and she doesn’t look away when their eyes meet.
She tells him she had a crush on him when she was 16, used to make up excuses to call his house to ask for help with her math homework even though Ray was perfectly capable of helping her. The admission hangs in the warm air between them, and every last bit of his resistance crumbles, the shame he’d been feeling for the last hour melting into something softer, something he hasn’t felt in years. He lifts a hand to brush a stray strand of hair off her face, and his calloused fingers graze her cheek; she leans into the touch, no hesitation, no awkwardness, like she’s been waiting for him to do it for years.
They sit down on the fold out bed, passing back and forth a cold IPA he pulls from the shop mini fridge, their knees pressed together the whole time. She tells him she’s got three more days in Austin before she has to fly back to Denver, and that she wants him to show her all the hidden camping spots he used to take her dad to out in the Hill Country. When she rests her hand on his thigh and grins, asking if he’d want to be her first co-pilot for the test run of her van once she buys it, he doesn’t even hesitate to say yes.
