Manny Ruiz, 63, makes his living restoring vintage travel campers out of the two-bay shop behind his central Oregon home. He hasn’t so much as had a casual coffee with a woman who wasn’t a cousin or hardware store clerk since his wife Ellen died of ovarian cancer eight years prior. His sister nags him constantly about his worst flaw: he treats any flicker of interest in another person as a personal insult to Ellen’s memory, even when he knows she’d yell herself hoarse at him for moping this long. He’d spent that Saturday sanding the dented aluminum shell of a 1972 Airstream, grease crammed under his fingernails and a streak of rust-colored primer on his left jaw, when he headed to the annual Main Street street fair. He planned only to grab a cold IPA and smoked sausage before heading back to work.
The beer tent was crammed with regulars, the air thick with charcoal smoke and the twang of a 90s country cover band playing at the far end of the street. He’d just grabbed his beer off the counter when someone side-swiped his shoulder, cold lime seltzer splashing across the front of his faded navy flannel. He looked down first, at the dark splotch spreading across the fabric, then up, and met the eyes of Clara Hale, 58, his new next-door neighbor he’d only waved at over the fence for three months, the one who left potted tomato plants on his porch in May without a note. She wore a linen button down unbuttoned at the collar, frayed cutoff jean shorts, and scuffed work boots, a smudge of purple blueberry pie filling streaked across her left wrist.
She apologized immediately, leaning in without thinking to dab at the seltzer stain with a crumpled napkin pulled from her pocket, her shoulder pressing firm against his chest for three full seconds before she seemed to register how close she was. He could smell lavender hand cream and the lemon polish she used on the old library books she restored, a scent he’d caught once before drifting over the fence when she worked on her porch. She stepped back, but didn’t move far, holding his eye contact longer than any casual acquaintance would, a half-smirk tugging at her mouth when she noticed he was staring at the pie smudge on her wrist. “Baked it for the contest,” she said, holding the wrist up like a trophy. “Got second place. Lost to a lady who puts bourbon in her crust. Total cheat code.”
Manny laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t make often, and leaned against the tent pole beside her, fighting the stupid little jolt in his chest when someone bumped his back and pushed him an inch closer to her. He knew she was married, had seen her husband mowing the lawn once: a loud, gruff guy who drove a brand new $200,000 RV and yelled at neighborhood kids for stepping on his grass. He knew he should make an excuse, head back to his shop, forget this whole interaction before he did something stupid, before he let himself want something he was convinced he didn’t deserve. But she kept talking, asking about the Airstream she’d seen in his driveway, saying her husband hated anything that wasn’t shiny and new, that she’d begged for a vintage camper for years and he’d laughed in her face. “I’m leaving him, by the way,” she said, so casual he almost missed it, sipping her seltzer like she was commenting on the weather. “Been planning it for a year. Just haven’t told anyone in town yet. Figured you wouldn’t run your mouth.”
They talked for 45 minutes, the crowd growing thicker around them, every random bump from a passerby pressing them closer, their knees brushing when they leaned against the same table to split a bowl of salted pretzels. When their hands both reached for the same pretzel at the same time, his calloused fingers brushing her soft ones, he felt a spark shoot up his arm, the kind of feeling he hadn’t had since he was 19 and kissed Ellen for the first time at a drive-in movie. Guilt pricked him for half a second, then he remembered what Ellen had told him two weeks before she died: that she wanted him to be happy, that he didn’t get to spend the rest of his life punishing himself for outliving her. The sun dipped below the buildings, dark fat raindrops falling out of nowhere, people scattering for cover. She asked him to walk her to her car parked behind the community center half a block away, and he nodded before he could think better of it.
They barely made it 20 feet before the sky opened up, rain pouring so hard he could barely see three feet ahead, so they ducked under the awning of the closed feed store, pressed shoulder to shoulder against the wood siding, laughing so hard their sides hurt. She wiped a raindrop off his cheek with her thumb, then leaned in and kissed him, slow and soft, blueberry pie and lime seltzer on her lips, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t pull away.
They pulled back when the rain slowed to a drizzle, her cheeks pink, hair sticking to the side of her face. She pulled a slip of paper torn from a library checkout slip out of her pocket, scribbled her phone number on it in blue ink, and shoved it into his flannel pocket. “Call me when you’re ready to give me that Airstream tour,” she said, grinning, before turning to walk the rest of the way to her car. He stood under the awning for another minute, watching her taillights turn down Main Street, before pulling the slip out of his pocket. He wiped a raindrop off the edge of the paper, his thumb brushing the faded library stamp at the bottom, and hit save on his phone contact entry for her.
