Manny Ruiz is 53, a vintage arcade repair technician who runs his shop out of a converted two-car garage outside Mount Gilead, Ohio. He’s at the Morrow County Fair for the four-day August run, hauling 12 of his most popular cabinets out of his work van, sweat sticking his faded 1987 Def Leppard tour tee to his back, calloused hands crusted with old solder and silicone grease. He’s done this fair every year for six years, mostly keeps to himself, brings a cooler of cheap Pabst for after closing, sleeps in the back of the van if he’s too tired to drive the 20 minutes home. His biggest flaw, if you ask his sister who badgers him every Sunday about dating, is that he’s shut himself off entirely from casual connection since his wife left him eight years prior for a guy who sold fifth-wheel RVs. He’s convinced anyone who shows him kindness has an angle, that letting someone get close just means setting himself up for another quiet, messy goodbye.
He first notices Lena around 1pm, when the heat is hovering at 88 degrees and the humidity is so thick you can taste the corn and cut grass in the air. She runs the peach pie stand two booths down, wears a gingham apron with sunflowers stitched on the pocket, dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, strands stuck to her sun-kissed neck. He’s hauling a 120-pound Street Fighter II cabinet up the ramp to his booth when he catches her staring, she lifts a hand and waves, he freezes for half a second, just nods awkwardly and looks away, tells himself she’s just being polite, doesn’t mean anything. For the rest of the afternoon he can’t stop stealing glances: she laughs so hard she snorts when a toddler spills cherry lemonade all down her apron, hands the kid a free mini peach pie to stop his crying, her teeth are slightly crooked on the left side, her arms dusted with freckles from working her family’s 10-acre peach orchard all summer.
He’s reaching for a box of replacement joysticks on the top shelf of his supply cart around 4pm when his elbow knocks the whole stack over, neon rubber grips clattering across the asphalt right toward her booth. She drops the pie she’s wrapping for a customer, wipes her hands on her apron, and walks over to help him pick them up. They both reach for the same hot pink grip at the same time, their knuckles brushing, and Manny’s skin sparks like he just touched a live circuit board. He yanks his hand back so fast he knocks over a smaller stack of button caps. She laughs, low and warm, not mocking, says “Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Lena. My stand’s just over there, in case you get a craving for something sweet later.” He mumbles his name, can’t hold eye contact for more than two seconds, his face burning half from embarrassment, half from the way her shoulder is pressed to his while they gather the rest of the grips. He smells peach and vanilla bean on her skin, hears the faint jingle of her silver horseshoe necklace when she leans down to grab a grip under his cart. He wants to ask her if she wants a root beer from his cooler, but he clams up, just mumbles a thanks, and scurries back to his booth, kicking himself for being a bumbling idiot for ten minutes straight. He’s torn: half of him is disgusted he’s even getting flustered over a stranger, that he’s letting himself feel something other than the quiet, safe indifference he’s cultivated for years, the other half can’t stop replaying the feel of her knuckle against his, the way her laugh curled around the loud carnival music like it was meant just for him.
The fair shuts down at 10pm, most vendors are already packed up, the parking lot half empty, crickets chirping so loud they drown out the distant whine of the Ferris wheel powering down. Manny is wiping down the Pac-Man screen, half a beer in his other hand, when he hears soft footsteps behind him. It’s Lena, holding a slice of pie wrapped in a crumpled paper napkin, still warm enough to seep through the paper and heat the palm of her hand. She says she had an extra left over, noticed he hadn’t left yet, figured he might be hungry after hauling heavy cabinets all day. She sits on the edge of his folding table, denim shorts riding up just a little, her bare knee brushing his thigh when she leans forward to squint at the high score list on the Pac-Man screen. “You hold the record here?” she asks, nodding at the MRU scrawled at the top of the list. He nods, takes the pie, takes a bite, it’s sweet and tart, the crust flaky, better than any food he’s eaten in months. He admits he’s been staring at her booth all day, that he almost walked over three times to buy a pie but got too nervous to follow through. She laughs, leans back a little, says she noticed, that she was hoping he’d come over, that she likes the way he focuses when he’s fixing a cabinet, like nothing else in the world exists for him in that moment. He brushes a crumb off her lower lip with his thumb, his finger lingering for a beat, and she doesn’t pull away, leans into the touch just a little, her eyes darkening.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his van to share the rest of his beer, says he’s got a whole cooler full, says his old hound dog back at the shop would be mad if he didn’t bring her home a slice of pie too. She grins, hops off the table, slips her soft, flour-dusted hand into his calloused, grease-stained one, squeezes it tight. He walks her to her booth to help her pack up the last of her pie tins, the warm August air soft against his face, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to shut down, to push someone away before they can leave first. The neon “LENA’S PEACH PIES” sign flickers off behind them as he lifts her last box of supplies into the back of her pickup truck.
