Rico Marquez, 53, makes his living prying rusted bolts out of 1970s camper vans and patching faded vinyl upholstery in his cinder block garage off Boise’s North End. He hasn’t brought anyone back to his place for anything stronger than a beer and a parts quote since his wife bailed for a ski instructor in Sun Valley eight years prior, and he’s fine with that. Or at least he tells himself he is, every time Mabel from three houses down corners him to set him up with her cousin from Nampa. He only shows up to the annual August block party because Mabel drops a pecan pie thick with bourbon on his porch every Christmas, and he’s got a rule about paying back favors.
He’s got a cold IPA in one hand, half a charred bratwurst in the other, and he’s already mapped his exit route when someone shoulder-checks him from behind. He stumbles forward, a slosh of beer splattering the front of the linen button-down the woman in front of him is wearing over a floral sundress. He recognizes her immediately: Lena, the new next-door neighbor he’s only exchanged quick waves with over the fence for the past three months, the one who’s always out in her yard at 6 a.m. pulling weeds in work boots caked with mud, the one who blasts Patsy Cline loud enough he can hear it through his garage walls when he’s sanding paneling.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in his jeans pocket. He’s suddenly hyper-aware of the grease under his fingernails, the fact that his own shirt still has a faint oil stain on the cuff from the Ford Econoline he was working on that morning.
She laughs, swatting his hand away gently when he tries to dab at the stain on her shirt. Her knuckles brush his wrist, warm, and he doesn’t pull away. “Relax, it’s thrifted. I spilled coffee on it before I even left the house this morning. This just adds character.”
The crowd shifts around them, a group of teens carrying a cooler of seltzer squeezing past, and she steps closer to avoid getting knocked, her bare calf brushing the rough denim of his jeans. He can smell jasmine and lemon polish on her, faint under the smell of charcoal and hop in the air, and when he meets her eyes, she doesn’t look away, dark hazel, crinkled at the corners from the sun. He learns she moved to Boise three months prior from Portland, after her husband died of a heart attack last winter, to be closer to her granddaughter who lives ten minutes away. She mentions the beat up 1968 VW bus sitting under a tarp in her driveway, the one she inherited from her dad, the one she’s been trying to fix up to take her granddaughter camping in the Sawtooths this fall.
“I’ve been asking around for someone who knows their way around old engines,” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the Tom Petty track blaring from the speaker on the porch behind them. Her elbow brushes his bicep, calloused from turning wrenches all day, and he feels heat creep up the back of his neck. “I had a guy give me a quote for $6,000 just to get the engine running. Sounded like he was trying to rip me off.”
Rico snorts. He knows that guy, runs a shop over on State Street, overcharges every woman who walks through the door. “That guy couldn’t tell a carburetor from a spark plug. I can take a look at it for you, if you want. No charge.”
She raises an eyebrow, a small smirk playing on her lips. “No catch? I thought all guys who work on cars demanded beer as payment at minimum.”
“Beer works,” he says, before he can think better of it. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to do this, wasn’t going to invite the mess of getting to know someone new, wasn’t going to risk feeling stupid when she realized he’s better at talking about transmission lines than he is at small talk. But she’s still looking at him like she actually wants to hear what he has to say, and he can’t remember the last time someone did that.
She nods, tilting her head toward the row of houses at the end of the block. “You wanna head over now? The party’s just gonna turn into a bunch of drunk dads arguing about football in half an hour anyway.”
He pauses for half a second, glancing over at Mabel, who’s watching them from the picnic table, grinning so wide her glasses are sliding down her nose. He’s already breaking every one of his self-imposed rules, but for the first time in eight years, it doesn’t feel like a mistake. He nods, draining the last of his IPA and tossing the can in the recycling bin next to the grill.
The sidewalk is still warm under his work boots from the day’s sun, the crickets just starting to chirp in the maple trees lining the street. Every other step, her hand brushes his, light, deliberate, not an accident. When they reach her driveway, she tugs the tarp off the corner of the VW bus, paint chipped, sun-faded blue, and then turns to him, leaning in before he can say anything, her lips soft against his, tasting like peach seltzer and mint gum.
