Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage Japanese motorcycles out of a cinder block garage on the edge of Lancaster, Ohio. He’s avoided anything resembling a date since his wife Karen left him eight years prior for a SaaS sales rep who wore tailored polos and thought “fixing things” meant calling a handyman. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few friends he has left, is that he’d rather sand a rusted gas tank for 12 hours straight than make small talk with someone he finds attractive, convinced he’s too set in his grease-stained ways to bother anyone new.
He’s at the VFW Friday fish fry mid-August, paper plate piled high with breaded cod and vinegar-doused coleslaw, when he spots her. The heat’s still thick enough to make the fluorescent lights hum, the air thick with the smell of fried batter and old beer, and Lila Marlow is weaving through the folding tables, strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a loose braid, flour dusted on the forearm of her yellow sundress, scuffed white Converse tapping the linoleum. She’s Karen’s cousin, 11 years younger than him, the last time he saw her was at his wedding 15 years prior, when she’d snuck a piece of cake before the toast and winked at him across the reception hall.
She sees him before he can duck his head, waves, and makes a beeline for his booth off in the corner. “Mind if I sit?” she asks, already sliding into the seat across from him before he can answer. He nods, wiping a smudge of motorcycle grease off his jaw with the back of his hand, suddenly hyper aware of the hole in the elbow of his faded flannel. They make lazy small talk first: she just moved back to town to take over her grandma’s bakery on Main, he just finished restoring a 1972 CB750 for a guy who drove all the way from Detroit to pick it up. When she reaches across the table to grab the ketchup, her forearm brushes his, soft and warm against his calloused, grease-stained skin, and he jolts like he touched a live wire. She laughs, a bright, throaty sound that cuts through the Johnny Cash playing on the jukebox. “Sorry,” she says, holding his gaze longer than necessary, “I’m always clumsy when I’m nervous.”
The conflict hits him square in the chest then: he knows Karen would lose her mind if she found out they were even sitting together, that the whole extended family would gossip for months, that he’s spent years avoiding exactly this kind of messy, unplanned complication. But he can’t look away from the freckles across her nose, the way she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear when she talks about the peach pie she baked that morning, the fact that she’s leaning across the table like she actually cares what he has to say about carburetor rebuilds. She mentions she heard Karen left him, snorts when he says the guy she left for collects vintage wine fridges as a hobby. “I always thought she was an idiot,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, “you’re the kind of guy who fixes things instead of trading them in for something shinier. That’s rare.”
They finish their food as the crowd thins out, and she pushes her empty plate to the side, tilts her head at him. “Wanna walk down to the bakery with me? I pulled a fresh peach pie out right before I left, would love your opinion.” He hesitates for half a second, every instinct telling him to go home to his quiet trailer and his half-finished motorcycle, but he nods before he can overthink it. The walk down Main is soft, fireflies starting to blink in the ditches, the air still warm enough that he doesn’t miss his jacket, her shoulder brushing his every few steps. He doesn’t move away.
She unlocks the front door of the bakery, and the smell of cinnamon and ripe peaches hits him so hard he smiles before he can stop himself. She cuts him a thick slice, hands it to him on a chipped ceramic plate, their fingers brushing when he takes it. He takes a bite, sweet and tart and perfect, and tells her it’s the best pie he’s ever had. She steps closer, so close he can smell vanilla perfume mixed with flour and yeast, and says she’s had a crush on him since she was 22, when she came to visit Karen and he fixed her busted old bike for free, didn’t even ask her for a soda as thanks. He doesn’t say anything, just reaches out, brushes a fleck of flour off her forearm, his thumb lingering on her soft skin. She tilts her chin up, eyes dark, and he leans down, kisses her slow, soft at first, then deeper, she tastes like lemonade and peach, her hand coming up to curl around the back of his neck, the grease under his fingernails feels silly for half a second but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away.
They pull apart after a minute, both laughing a little, breathless. She tucks her face into his shoulder for a second, then pulls back, nods toward the back of the shop where a threadbare couch sits under a window. “Got a stack of old Westerns back there,” she says, “wanna stay for another slice? Maybe longer?” He nods, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. He sets his empty pie plate on the counter, licks a crumb of peach filling off his thumb, and doesn’t even think about his ex-wife for the first time in eight years.
