Manny Ruiz, 53, has run his vintage camper restoration shop out of a cinder block garage on the edge of Asheville for 12 years. His biggest flaw is that he’s turned “no nonsense” into a personality crutch, ever since his wife packed her hiking boots and left him for a whitewater raft guide 8 years prior. He avoids local events like they’re contagious, figures all they amount to is forced small talk with people who only want to ask him for free estimates on rotting RVs. His neighbor, a retired elementary school teacher named Darlene, badgered him into coming to the summer block party anyway, said he’d been holed up in his shop long enough.
He’s leaning against the dented Igloo cooler 20 minutes in, already mentally tallying the body work he needs to do on a 1968 Airstream the next day, when a hand reaches past his shoulder for a citrus seltzer. Their knuckles brush. He feels the thin, rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, before she pulls back with a soft laugh. It’s Clara Bennett, the new part-time librarian at the West Asheville branch, the one who called him two weeks prior asking about fixing up a beat-up 1972 International Scout her late husband left her. They’d only ever talked on the phone, her voice low and warm over the line as she listed off the vehicle’s quirks, but he’d recognized it instantly.
He’s torn, at first. It’s been 8 years since he’s so much as flirted with anyone, and a stupid, guilty part of him feels like he’s doing something wrong, like he’s betraying the life he thought he’d have even though the woman who was part of it left without looking back. He keeps leaning back an inch, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to keep the distance between them, but she doesn’t push. She just talks, rambling a little about the summer reading program she’s running for the local kids, about how she wants to fix the Scout up to take her 7-year-old granddaughter to Great Smoky Mountains National Park this fall, about how she saw his custom sticker on the library’s community board and knew he was the right person to call. When she mentions her late husband, her voice doesn’t catch, doesn’t go tight with grief—it’s soft, fond, like she’s tucking a good memory back in her pocket instead of holding it up as a barrier, and something tight in Manny’s chest loosens a little.
The sun dips below the roofline of the corner store as they talk, and a group of neighbors string fairy lights between the oak trees, turning the whole block soft and golden. The band slows down, striking the first familiar chords of Free Fallin’, and she tilts her head at him, grinning. She asks if he knows how to dance. He almost says no, almost makes up an excuse about a bad knee or a prior commitment, but then he’s reaching out before he can think, wiping the chocolate frosting off her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Her breath catches, just a little, and her dark eyes lock with his, and he feels that low, warm buzz in his chest he thought died the day his wife drove away. He says yeah, he knows how to dance.
They move to the makeshift dance floor in the middle of the street, not too close at first, his hand light on her waist, hers resting on his shoulder. Halfway through the song, she shifts, resting her head against his chest, and he can feel the heat of her through the thin linen of her shirt, the quiet rumble of her laugh when he steps on the toe of her work boot by accident. The hum of the music, the distant sound of kids laughing as they run through the street with glow sticks, the faint stickiness of the summer air on his neck, it all fades to background noise for a minute. He makes a mental note to pull the parts list for her Scout out of his desk drawer first thing tomorrow morning.
