Rico Marquez is 51, runs a vintage camper restoration shop out of a cinder block garage on the eastern edge of Austin, Texas. His worst flaw is that he assumes every stranger who strikes up a conversation with him wants a discount on frame-off rebuilds, a habit he picked up after his wife left him eight years prior, taking half his tools and every client lead she’d networked for them. He hasn’t been on a date in seven of those years, spends most weekends either sanding fiberglass or smoking brisket alone on his back porch, and only showed up to the small business association barbecue because his biggest regular, Jake, begged him to come, said the free Shiner Bock was worth the hour of forced small talk with real estate agents and coffee shop owners.
He’s leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, half-empty beer in one hand, paper plate of fatty brisket and dill pickles in the other, when she walks over. He recognizes her immediately: Lila, Jake’s ex-wife, who dropped off Jake’s 1972 Airstream for a water line repair three months prior, two days after their divorce was finalized. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1980s Willie Nelson tee, bare feet in scuffed white sneakers, and she stops so close to him he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint smoky tang of brisket on her fingers when she holds out an extra side of coleslaw. “Saw you grab a plate without it,” she says, raising her voice over the two-piece country band sawing through a Johnny Cash cover off to the side of the park. Her knuckles brush his wrist when he takes the container, and he flinches like he’s been burned, doesn’t pull away.
He’s instantly annoyed at himself for noticing how her hair falls in sun-bleached waves over her shoulders, how her smile crinkles the corners of her hazel eyes, how she holds his gaze for two beats longer than is strictly polite. Jake’s a good guy, has brought him six separate camper rebuild jobs in the last four years, bailed him out when he couldn’t make rent once during the 2020 supply chain crunch. The last thing Rico wants is to be the asshole who hits on his friend’s fresh ex-wife, so he tries to steer the conversation to safe, work-adjacent topics first, asks her how the downtown used bookstore she just bought is doing, fully expects her to pivot to asking for a deal on the tiny teardrop camper she’d mentioned buying a few weeks prior.
She doesn’t. She talks about restoring leather-bound first editions, about how she refuses to use cheap glue on spines even if it cuts into her profit margin, about how she loved that he’d spent three extra days sanding the original aluminum trim on Jake’s Airstream instead of replacing it with cheap imported stock. No one ever notices that part of his work. Most clients only care about how fast he can get the job done, how cheap he can do it for. He finds himself leaning in, not even bothering to yell over the band anymore, just listening, the faint buzz of the crowd fading to background noise.
They talk for 45 minutes, and he forgets to check his phone once. When a group of local real estate agents they both know drifts over to corner them into talking about upcoming zoning changes for the east side, Lila leans in, her shoulder pressed firm against his bicep, and whispers, “Wanna go walk down to the creek? Get away from all this boring crap.” He hesitates for half a second, his brain screaming that this is a bad idea, that Jake will never bring him work again, that he’s too old for this kind of stupid, giddy thrill. Then he nods, sets his empty beer bottle on the picnic table, follows her across the sun-warmed grass.
The creek is quiet, only the sound of crickets and fireflies blinking low over the slow-moving water when they stop at the edge of the bank. The air smells like wet dirt and wild honeysuckle, cool enough that he’s glad he threw on his flannel shirt earlier that afternoon even when the sun was high. She turns to face him, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and says, “I asked Jake if it was okay to talk to you last week. For the record. He said he doesn’t care, that you’re the only guy he knows who wouldn’t mess me around.”
Rico blinks, feels the tight knot of guilt in his chest unravel a little. He’d been so busy beating himself up for even being attracted to her, he’d never stopped to think she might have already handled the messy part. “I thought I was being a creep for even noticing you,” he admits, scratching the back of his neck, the calluses on his fingers catching on the short gray hairs there. She laughs, a low, warm sound, and steps closer, brushing a stray piece of foxtail grass off the sleeve of his faded flannel work shirt. “You’re not a creep. I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me since I dropped off that Airstream. You kept staring at your work order like I was gonna ask you to fix something for free.”
He laughs too, feels something light and unfamiliar unfurl in his chest, the same feeling he gets when he fires up a camper engine that’s been dead for 20 years and it turns over on the first try. He asks her if she likes al pastor tacos, says he knows a hole-in-the-wall spot off 6th that’s open until 2 a.m., makes their own horchata in house with real cinnamon. She grins, pulls a crumpled receipt from her bookstore out of her shorts pocket, scribbles her number on the back in blue ballpoint, tucks it into the front pocket of his stained work jeans, her fingers brushing the rough denim over his hip when she does. He tucks his hand into his pocket a second later, presses his thumb to the crumpled paper to make sure it’s real, watches her turn and start walking back toward the barbecue, glancing over her shoulder to make sure he’s following.
