Manny Ruiz, 59, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of the sunroom of his Asheville bungalow, a space lined with shelves of chipped Royal and Underwood models, their keys polished to a soft sheen from decades of use. His biggest flaw is that he bails on every social event within 25 minutes, convinced no one cares to hear about the minutiae of replacing a 1920s typewriter ribbon spool, even at the weekly bluegrass jam he’s attended for six years running. His wife died eight years prior from a sudden stroke, and he’s kept most people at arm’s length ever since, save for the old guys he picks mandolin with every Thursday at The Rusty String, the dive bar three blocks from his house.
He’s perched on a scuffed vinyl bar stool last week, tuning his mandolin’s G string, when the door slams open and a gust of cool October air blows in, carrying the smell of pine and lavender. He glances up, and his throat goes tight. He’d recognize that scar above her left eyebrow anywhere: Elara Voss, mom of Javi, one of his favorite woodshop students from back when he taught at the local high school 17 years prior. Back then, he’d nursed a stupid, guilty crush on her, the kind he’d never breathe a word of to anyone—dating a student’s parent was a fireable offense, and even the split second of eye contact they’d shared at parent-teacher conferences made him feel like he was breaking a dozen unwritten rules. He’d written the feeling off as loneliness, buried it deep, and hadn’t seen her since Javi graduated.
The bar is packed, every other stool taken, so she slides onto the one two spots down from him, crossing her denim-clad legs as she flags the bartender for a whiskey sour. Some guy carrying a guitar case bumps her shoulder a minute later, and she lurches sideways, her knee knocking firmly against his. She doesn’t move away after. He can feel the heat of her leg through the thin fabric of his work pants, and his hand fumbles the mandolin tuner, dropping it on the bar with a clatter. She laughs, soft, and picks it up, handing it to him. Their fingers brush when he takes it, and he feels the rough callus on her index finger, the same one he’d noticed back when she’d handed him Javi’s project permission slip all those years ago.
“You’re Manny, right?” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the fiddle playing in the corner. Her breath smells like peppermint and the first sip of her whiskey sour, and he nods, too flustered to speak at first. He’s torn between the low, thrumming excitement of sitting this close to her, and the sharp, old twinge of guilt, like he’s still a teacher, still crossing a line he’s not supposed to. He wants to make an excuse to leave, like he always does, but his feet are glued to the foot of the bar stool.
They talk through the first set, her leaning in closer every time someone yells across the bar, their shoulders pressing together every now and then when someone squeezes past. She tells him she moved back to town last month, widowed three years prior, runs a small native plant nursery out of a plot on the west side. He tells her about the typewriter restoration business, shows her a photo on his phone of a 1918 Underwood he just finished fixing for a college student writing her thesis on Appalachian labor movements. She leans so far over to look their temples almost touch, and he can feel the soft strands of her gray-streaked auburn hair brush his cheek.
The jam ends at 10, and he’s packing his mandolin into its beat-up leather case when she offers to help him carry it to his truck, rain spitting down from the dark sky outside. They huddle under the bar’s faded plaid awning for a second, rain drumming on the metal above them, and she turns to him, her eyes glinting in the neon beer sign light. “I had a crush on you back then, you know,” she says, no preamble. “Javi talked about your class nonstop. I never said anything, didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
The old guilt melts away so fast he feels lightheaded, like he’s been carrying a weight he didn’t even know was there for 17 years. He laughs, a rough, surprised sound, and admits he’d felt the same way, had spent years telling himself it was inappropriate, that he was being an idiot for even thinking about it.
He asks her out to breakfast at the diner down the street the next morning, the one with the pecan pancakes she’d mentioned loving back at the 2006 parent-teacher conference. She says yes, grinning, and takes the mandolin case from him to set it on the passenger seat of his old Ford pickup. Her hand brushes his wrist when she passes the empty space back, rain drops cold on his skin but her palm warm where it lingers for half a beat before she pulls away.
