Rico Marquez is 52, makes his living sanding dents out of vintage travel trailer aluminum and reupholstering frayed dinette cushions out of a drafty barn 10 miles outside Boise. He’s stubborn to a fault—hasn’t asked anyone for help lifting a heavy frame or running a parts run since his wife packed her bags and left for Portland eight years prior, hasn’t set foot at the annual town spring craft fair in just as long, convinced the whole event runs on nothing but overpriced jam and idle gossip. He only agreed to man his best friend’s smoked brisket booth this year because the guy shattered his elbow falling off a ladder three days prior, and Rico owed him a favor from when he bailed him out of a DUI back in 2017.
The first three hours are torture. The sun beats down on the tin awning over the booth, turning the air thick with hickory smoke and the sweet tang of barbecue sauce. He swipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his grease-stained flannel sleeve for the hundredth time, ignores the sideways glances from a group of retired teachers who definitely remember him as the guy who left his wife for no good reason, as far as the town narrative goes. He’s halfway to telling the next customer in line he’s closing up early when she steps up to the counter.
He recognizes her immediately. Clara Mendez, moved to town three months prior, bought the old Craftsman bungalow on Maple Street, left a 22-year marriage back in Chicago, the whole town’s been whispering that she walked out on a perfectly good lawyer husband to “find herself” out west, like that’s some kind of character flaw. Half the single guys in town have already been told to leave her alone, lest they get dragged into whatever drama she brought with her. Rico’s already told himself a dozen times to stay far away.
She’s wearing a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, scuffed steel-toe work boots, and jeans that have paint splatters up the left leg. The sun catches the thick silver streaks running through her dark curly hair, and she’s got a tiny silver hoop through her left nostril that glints when she smiles. “Three brisket sliders, extra pickles,” she says, and her voice is lower than he expected, rough around the edges like she’s been smoking a pack a day for 20 years, even though he’s never seen her with a cigarette.
He nods, piles the sliders on a paper plate, shoves a handful of pickles on the side. The linoleum counter is sticky under his forearm with spilled barbecue sauce when he leans across to pass her the plate, their fingers brushing, and he jolts a little—her skin is warm, calloused at the fingertips, nothing like the soft, manicured hands his ex always had. She laughs, a loud, snorty, unapologetic sound that cuts through the twang of the country cover band playing at the main stage 50 yards away. “Relax, I don’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
He snorts before he can stop himself. No one’s teased him like that in years, not even his closest friends. He leans against the counter, crosses his arms over his chest, and for the first time all day, he doesn’t feel like he’s counting down the minutes until he can leave. “Heard you’re the lady who bought that old Scotty trailer off Old Man Henderson last month,” he says, and he doesn’t know why he brings it up, except he’d seen the tiny 1968 model sitting in her driveway when he drove past last week, dented all along the passenger side, roof half rotted out.
Her eyes light up. She leans in across the counter, close enough that he can smell the vanilla and cedar perfume she’s wearing, mixed with the faint smell of paper glue, and his breath catches a little. “You know anything about fixing those up? I want to turn it into a mobile used book shop, but every mechanic I’ve talked to so far says it’s a lost cause.”
He should tell her he’s swamped, that he’s got three trailers backed up in the barn that need to be done by the end of the month, that getting involved with the town’s most talked about new resident is the last thing he needs, that he doesn’t need another round of gossip painting him as the homewrecker adjacent. But then she reaches across the counter, brushes a fleck of hickory ash off his cheek with her thumb, and the callus on the pad of her thumb catches on the stubble along his jaw, and he forgets every single one of those excuses.
“I’ll swing by your place tomorrow around 10,” he says, before he can think better of it. “No charge for the first estimate. That Scotty’s not a lost cause. Just needs someone who knows what they’re doing.”
She grins, pulls her hand back slowly, like she’s savoring the last second of contact. She tucks a slip of paper with her phone number scrawled on it under the edge of the paper plate holding her sliders, winks, and turns to walk away. He watches her go, the way her boots scuff the dirt path between the booths, the way she glances over her shoulder once when she’s halfway to the book booth, and waves.
He picks up the slip of paper, tucks it into the pocket of his jeans, takes a long sip of the warm beer he’d stashed under the counter an hour prior. The retired teachers are staring again, he can feel their eyes on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t care. For the first time in eight years, he’s not dreading waking up the next morning. He wipes another streak of sweat off his forehead, calls out to the next customer in line, and he’s actually smiling when he asks what they want.
