Manny Ruiz is 53, runs a vintage snowmobile restoration shop out of his double garage outside Hibbing, Minnesota, and he hasn’t set foot at the Hibbing Fire Department’s weekly winter fish fry in seven years. Not since his wife packed her suitcase after 18 years of marriage, drove south to the Twin Cities, and left him with a garage full of half-restored sleds and a habit of avoiding any event where more than 10 of his neighbors were gathered. His least favorite question, the one every old lady at the grocery store asked at least once a month, was “You seeing anyone yet, Manny?” So when his 16-year-old niece texted him 20 minutes before the fry started begging him to come buy cheer squad raffle tickets, he almost said no. He said yes anyway.
The gym smelled like fried walleye, burnt coffee, and the cheap pine cleaner the volunteer firefighters used to mop the floors after events. Manny grabbed a Grain Belt from the plastic cooler by the door, hung back by the cinder block wall, and planned to stay for 15 minutes max, buy $20 worth of tickets, and bolt back to his shop where he was halfway through rebuilding a 1974 Arctic Cat for a guy from Duluth. He was wiping a smudge of two-stroke oil off his jaw when a woman in a forest green parka slammed into his side reaching for a root beer, her thick wool sleeve brushing his knuckles hard enough to make him fumble his beer.
“Shit, sorry,” she said, steadying his can with one gloved hand before pulling off her hood. Manny recognized her immediately: Clara Bennett, the new county forest ranger everyone in town had been chattering about for three months, the one who’d ticketed the mayor’s son for off-roading in a protected wetland her first week on the job. Her hair was streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid, and there was a faint scratch across her left cheekbone, like she’d run into a low-hanging pine branch earlier that day. She smelled like pine sap and peppermint lip balm, sharp and warm all at once. “You’re Manny, right? The sled guy?”
He blinked. He’d never talked to her before. “Yeah. That’s me.” He nodded at the scratch on her face. “Tree fight?”
She laughed, loud and unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that cut through the rattle of the deep fryers and the chatter of the crowd. She leaned in a little so he could hear her over the noise, her shoulder brushing his flannel-clad bicep, and he noticed the frayed cuff on her parka, the mud caked in the treads of her work boots. “Tree won, for the record. I found an abandoned 1978 Ski-Doo Blizzard out in the north section of the forest last week, spent three hours hacking through brush to drag it out to the road. Everyone says you’re the only guy within 100 miles who knows how to fix something that old.”
Manny’s first instinct was to make an excuse. To say he was booked solid for three months, to go back to hiding in his garage where he didn’t have to talk to anyone, where there was no risk of people whispering about him and the new ranger. But she was looking at him like he was the only person in the room who could help her, not like the guy whose wife left him, not like the town hermit who only left his property to get gas or go to the hardware store. He found himself leaning in too, his elbow brushing hers. “The Blizzard’s a pain. The carburetors rust shut if you so much as look at them wrong.”
“I’ve got a full set of OEM parts I found on Facebook Marketplace last week,” she said, grinning. “And a case of Surly Dark Ale in my fridge at the cabin, if you’re willing to come take a look at it tomorrow afternoon. No pressure if you’re busy.”
He caught a group of three older ladies by the pie table staring at them, nudging each other, and for half a second he almost bailed. Almost said he couldn’t make it, almost grabbed his niece’s raffle tickets and ran for the door. But then she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, her gloved finger brushing the corner of her mouth, and he realized he didn’t care what anyone thought. He hadn’t wanted to spend time with anyone this bad in seven years. “I can be there at 2.”
She pulled a crumpled napkin out of her parka pocket, scrawled her address on it with a pen she kept clipped to her work vest, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her bare wrist brushing his chest through the thin fabric. “Don’t be late. I’ll have the ale cold.”
He left 10 minutes later, raffle tickets stuffed in his jeans pocket, the napkin warm against his chest. He spent the rest of the night messing around with the Arctic Cat, but he couldn’t focus, kept replaying the way she laughed, the way her shoulder had pressed against his when she leaned in to talk.
He showed up at her cabin 10 minutes early the next day, his toolbox in the bed of his pickup, the gravel driveway crunching under his tires. The cabin was tucked between a stand of white pines, smoke curling out of the stone chimney, and the beat-up 1978 Ski-Doo was propped up on cinder blocks by the front porch. She was standing on the steps holding two frosty bottles of ale, her flannel shirt unbuttoned over a thermal top, the scratch on her cheek already fading to a faint pink.
He climbed out of the pickup, grabbed his toolbox, and walked up the steps to meet her. She held out one of the beers, and when he took it, their fingers brushed for half a second, warm against the cold glass. The wind carried the smell of pine and wood smoke over them, and he rested his toolbox on the porch rail, already looking forward to the grease under his nails and the sound of her laughing when he told her how stupidly she’d dragged the Blizzard out of the woods.
