Manny Ruiz, 52, has made a point of skipping every east Phoenix neighborhood block party for the six years he’s owned his vintage RV restoration shop out of his side garage. He’s stubborn to a fault, still stinging from the way his ex-wife rolled her eyes at his “pile of scrap metal” the day she drove off with a realtor who wore boat shoes unironically, and he’s spent the better part of three months dodging his new HOA president’s repeated emails and door knocks about his overflowing parts lot. He only shows up to this July shindig because his 19-year-old part-time assistant begged him to drop off the portable charcoal grill he’d welded back together for the HOA, said he’d skip his shift for a week if Manny didn’t play nice.
The asphalt sticks a little to the soles of his scuffed work boots when he hefts the grill out of his beat-up Ford F-150, heat shimmering off the pavement so bad the houses two blocks down look wavy. The mariachi band set up by the community pool is so loud his molars rattle, and the air smells like grilled carne asada, coconut sunscreen, and cherry sno-cone syrup. He’s already mentally mapping his exit, planning to leave the grill by the snack table and bolt, when he hears her voice over the brass.
“Ruiz. I was starting to think you didn’t actually live here, just used the address to hoard old RV parts.”
Lena’s leaning against the folding table by the cooler, cutoff denim shorts showing off a scar snaking up her left calf, a half-empty Modelo in one hand, a sno-cone dripping pink syrup down the other wrist. He’s only seen her from a distance before, usually when he’s pretending he doesn’t notice her sliding a notice under his front door, but up close she has freckles across her nose and a smudge of grease on her left cheek that she clearly missed when she washed her face that morning. She steps closer so he can hear her over the band, her bare shoulder brushing the rolled-up sleeve of his work shirt, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton.
He tenses up immediately, ready to argue about the parts lot, but she laughs, low and warm, and nods at the grill he’s holding. “I’ve been stalling the old guard on that notice for three months, by the way. Heard you’re restoring that 1972 Airstream for the Army vet who lives down on 17th. They can wait.”
He blinks, thrown off. He’d assumed she was the same as the last HOA board, a bored housewife with nothing better to do than nitpick people who actually worked for a living. He notices her calloused fingers when she shifts her beer to her other hand, the little silver wrench charm hanging from the thin chain around her neck. “I fix old Ford F-100s on the weekends,” she says, following his gaze, and winks. “Know a thing or two about messy side yards.”
The shock wears off fast, replaced by a warm, sharp thrill he hasn’t felt in years, the kind that feels like he’s getting away with something no one else would expect. He leans against the table next to her, not bothering to put the grill down yet, and nods at the sno-cone smudge on her jaw. “You got cherry syrup on your face,” he says, and when she tries to wipe it off with the back of her hand and misses, he reaches out without thinking, brushes it away with his thumb. Her skin is soft, a little sticky from the heat, and she doesn’t flinch, just holds his eye contact for a beat longer than necessary, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smile.
Neighbors glance over as they pass, he can see the surprise on their faces—everyone knows Manny Ruiz hates the HOA, hates block parties, hates anything that doesn’t involve a welding torch and a rusted RV frame. The attention makes the thrill sharper, that little secret that neither of them are half as opposed to each other as everyone thinks. She nods at the empty folding chair next to her, kicks a cooler of ice-cold Modelos toward his boot. “Stay. I wanna hear how you got that dent in your truck’s front bumper. And if you’re nice, I’ll bring up the fact that the HOA has a grant for small local businesses that do veteran work at the next meeting.”
He sits, even though he’d planned to be back in his garage 15 minutes ago, sipping a beer alone while he sanded down the Airstream’s aluminum paneling. Their knees brush under the table when she leans forward to grab a bag of chips from the middle, and he doesn’t move his leg away. She teases him about the 13 junk RVs he has parked behind his house, he teases her about the fact that she’s wearing sparkly flip flops to a block party where half the guests are covered in grill grease. By the time the mariachi band wraps up their set, the sun is dipping below the mountains, painting the sky pink and orange, and the air is cool enough that he doesn’t feel sweat rolling down his back anymore.
He offers to drive her home when people start packing up their coolers, and she nods, slipping her hand into his for half a second when he helps her stand up, like she’s testing to see if he’ll pull away. He doesn’t. He tucks the unused napkin he’d been twisting in his fist into his pocket, already counting the spare pieces of polished aluminum stacked on his workbench.
