Manny Ruiz is 52, has spent 12 years building custom motorcycle frames out of a cinder block garage tucked between pine stands outside Black Mountain, North Carolina. He quit his aerospace engineering job three weeks after his divorce, sold the four-bed suburban house he’d spent five years renovating, bought the land with cash, and decided he was done with small town gossip or family drama he couldn’t fix with a TIG welder and a cold beer. His biggest flaw, the one his 19-year-old niece Lila never stops ragging on him for, is that he holds grudges so long they grow roots. He hadn’t set foot at the town’s annual Fourth of July BBQ since the year his ex left him for the local realtor, even when his old buddies begged him to bring his famous smoked brisket.
Lila showed up on his doorstep at 2 PM with a cooler of beer and a threat to post all his embarrassing 2008 boy band cover band Halloween photos on Facebook if he didn’t come. He caved.
The park smells like charcoal lighter fluid, cherry wood smoke, and the artificial strawberry of 4-H snow cones. Kids scream on the bounce house, the high school marching band slurs through “America the Beautiful,” and Manny is already mentally counting down the minutes to leave when he spots her.
Clara Bennett, his ex-wife’s younger sister. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since she showed up to his house the week after the divorce to drop off his old record collection and refused to take sides. She’s 47 now, auburn hair streaked with one silver strand at the temple, freckles dark across her sun-warmed nose, wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Tom Petty t-shirt that might have been his once, back when he and her sister were still married. She leans against a picnic table twisting a hard seltzer tab, and when her eyes lock onto his, she pauses, smirks, and walks over.
She stops so close he can smell coconut sunscreen mixed with the faint tang of lime from her drink. “I’d say I’m surprised to see you here, but Lila texted me last night saying she was gonna drag you out of your cave whether you liked it or not.” She reaches out to punch his arm playfully, her knuckles brushing the faded wrench tattoo on his bicep, sending a sharp, unexpected jolt up his spine. He freezes for half a second, then huffs a laugh, shoving his hands in the pockets of his oil-stained work jeans. He’s always hated that he ever thought about her this way, even back when he was married. It felt wrong, like stealing, like breaking a rule he’d written for himself before he knew he needed it.
They wander to an empty picnic table tucked under an oak tree, far enough from the crowd no one pays them mind. She sits, her knee brushing his when she shifts to cross her legs, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin denim of her shorts. She tells him she left her husband last spring, moved back to town to take over the Main Street independent bookstore after their mom passed. She laughs when he tells her about the custom softail he’s building for a Miami client shipping it to Europe, the sound warm and rough, like she’s spent 10 years smoking too many cigarettes and laughing too loud at bad jokes. He finds himself telling her things he hasn’t told anyone: how he still misses the old house sometimes, how he still feels stupid for not seeing his ex’s affair coming, how he’s been scared to date anyone since because he doesn’t want to deal with the baggage of being the guy left for a realtor who wears boat shoes to every town meeting.
She leans in, her elbow resting on the table so close her shoulder presses to his, and he can see gold flecks in her green eyes when she talks. “You never deserved any of that, you know. I told her that, back then. I told her she was an idiot to let you go.” Her voice is lower now, no teasing left, and his throat goes dry. He’s been fighting this for 25 years, ever since he first met her at his ex’s 21st birthday party, when she was 19 in a neon pink dress and gave him a 90s grunge mix tape he still has in a workshop box. He’d spent all those years shoving that feeling down, telling himself it was wrong, that he was a bad person for even noticing her, that it was a line he could never cross.
He lifts his hand before he can think better of it, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just looks up at him, lips parted a little. The marching band starts playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” in the background, and somewhere a firecracker goes off loud enough that the bounce house kids scream louder. “I’m picking up coffee at the Main Street diner tomorrow at 8,” she says, her voice barely loud enough to hear over the noise. “If you want to show me that softail you’ve been working on.”
He nods, his thumb still resting on her cheek for one more second before he pulls his hand away. She smiles, picks up her seltzer can, takes a sip, never breaking eye contact.
They sit through the fireworks later, shoulders pressed together the whole time, no one coming over to bother them. He drives her back to her apartment above the bookstore later, her hand resting on his F150’s center console, their fingers brushing every time he hits a pothole. He doesn’t kiss her goodnight, not yet, but he knows he will tomorrow, when she shows up at his garage with a black coffee, extra cream and sugar, just how he likes it. The last thing he sees before he pulls out of her parking spot is her leaning in the doorway, waving, the streetlight gilding the edges of her auburn hair.
