Manny Ruiz is 52, makes his living restoring vintage pinball machines out of a cinder block garage behind his rural Ohio ranch house, and has not voluntarily attended a local social event for longer than 45 minutes since his ex-wife left him seven years prior for a guy who sold hazy IPAs out of a converted school bus. His only reason for showing up to the late August street fair this year is dropping off a fully restored 1981 Centipede pinball for the VFW booth, a favor he owes the old Marine who taught him to change his oil when he was 16.
The heat is thick enough to sip, smelling of fried dough and burnt charcoal and cut grass, when he yanks the dolly carrying the 300-pound machine to a hard stop to avoid running straight into a woman carrying a tray of peach cobbler samples. His left forearm brushes the soft curve of her chest through her thin yellow sundress, and he freezes, face flushing so hot he swears he can feel sweat bead at his hairline. He’s ready to mumble an apology and bolt before he recognizes her: Clara Bennett, the new town librarian who’s been leaving neon pink sticky notes on his shop door for three months begging him to bring a machine to the library’s teen game night. He’s ignored every single one.
She laughs, not the sharp, embarrassed laugh he expects, warm and low, and shifts the tray to one hip to brush a strand of auburn hair streaked with silver out of her face. “Easy there, Ruiz. I know you hate being within ten feet of other people, but you don’t have to take me out with a pinball machine to make a point.”
He blinks, caught off guard. Most people in town either tiptoe around his grouchy reputation or just call him an asshole to his face. No one’s ever teased him about it like it’s a silly quirk, not a character flaw. He mumbles an apology again, and she holds out a sample of cobbler on a paper napkin, her fingers brushing his when he takes it. Her skin is cool, even in the heat, and he notices the smudge of ink on her thumb, the faint scar across her knuckle from where she says she tripped over a stack of poetry books her first week on the job.
The cobbler is sweet, warm, the crust buttery enough that it melts on his tongue, and he almost chokes when she says she found his dad’s old dog-eared pinball repair manual in a box of donated books last month, had been meaning to drop it off at his shop. He’d thought that manual was gone for good, packed up in one of the boxes his ex took when she moved out, and the tight knot he’s carried in his chest for years loosens just a little.
He hasn’t been this close to a woman without feeling annoyed or defensive in years, and he fights the urge to step back. She nods at the group of teens already crowding the machine, whooping when someone hits a high score, and looks up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with green, crinkled at the corners when she smiles. “I still need that machine for game night, by the way. Also, I’ve got a 1978 Space Invaders cabinet in my basement that’s been broken for six months. I’ll pay you in as much peach cobbler as you can eat, plus a case of that cheap Mexican lager you keep stacked by your garage fridge. I saw it when I dropped off the last sticky note.”
He almost says no, the automatic response he’s honed for every invitation that isn’t a work call. But then he glances down, sees the little smudge of peach filling on her lower lip, feels the warmth of her shoulder through his worn work shirt, and nods before he can talk himself out of it.
She grins, pulls a crumpled receipt out of her purse and scribbles her number on the back, shoves it into the pocket of his work jeans. She has to get back to the library booth before her cobbler samples get warm, she says, and she waves over her shoulder as she walks away, the hem of her sundress fluttering in the light breeze.
Manny stands there for another ten minutes, watching the teens play the pinball machine, the crumpled receipt pressed tight in his pocket, and eats the rest of the cobbler she gave him. It’s still sweet.
