Manny Ruiz, 53, has restored 72 vintage camper vans out of his cinder block Asheville garage in the last 7 years, and the only thing he hates more than sanding rust off 1960s VW body panels is small talk with strangers. He’d planned on spending his Thursday night hunched over a carburetor and drinking cheap beer alone, but his latest client, a 72 year old retiree who’d just picked up a fully refurbished 1972 Westfalia, had all but dragged him to the downtown food truck roundup, insisting he owed Manny a proper thank you drink. Manny had caved mostly to avoid being rude, figuring he’d slip out after 10 minutes, no harm done.
The air smells like wood smoke, fried pork, and crisp October apple cider, the oak trees lining the sidewalk are streaked with burnt orange and deep red, and the crowd hums with the kind of lazy, loud energy he’s avoided since his ex-wife Carla left him three years prior. He’s leaning against a tree, sipping an IPA he doesn’t even like, scanning the crowd for an exit route, when the smell of grilled corn and melted cotija hits him, sharp and warm, and he follows it without thinking to the neon-lit arepa truck parked at the end of the row.
The woman leaning over the counter wiping it down with a rag recognizes him first. She grins, wide and bright, and Manny’s throat goes dry. It’s Marisol, Carla’s younger cousin, the one Carla had forbidden him from talking to at their wedding 11 years prior, calling her a “bad influence” who’d “fill his head with stupid ideas.” He hasn’t seen her since, and he’d forgotten how her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, how she has a tiny silver hoop through her left nostril, the faint smudge of cornmeal dusted on her left cheek. She’s wearing a faded flannel tied around her waist over a stained white apron, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, and she leans further over the counter, close enough he can smell coconut shampoo and cinnamon over the smoke pouring out of the truck’s grill.
“Manny Ruiz. I’d know that scar on your knuckle anywhere,” she says, nodding at the thick, pale scar across his right knuckle from when he dropped an engine block on it two years ago. “Carla used to complain you spent more time under cars than you did with her. I always told her she was crazy for leaving a guy who could fix anything.”
Manny freezes, half embarrassed, half hot under the collar. He’s spent three years telling himself Carla left because he was too busy, too closed off, too boring, and no one has ever called her crazy for it out loud. He mumbles a thanks, orders a pork arepa, and when she hands it to him wrapped in crinkly brown paper, their fingers brush. Her palm is calloused from flipping arepas all day, warm, and the jolt shoots up his arm so fast he almost drops the food. He blames the cold, or the beer, but he can feel his ears turning pink.
He hangs around the edge of the truck for the next hour, leaning against the metal side, sipping his beer, talking to her between orders. She teases him about the time he spilled an entire bottle of red wine on Carla’s mom’s white couch at the wedding, a story he’d begged everyone at the reception to forget, and she keeps sliding him extra fried plantains across the counter, no charge, winking when he tries to pay. He learns she moved to Asheville three months prior, quit her job as a line cook in Miami to open the truck, had been sleeping in a beat up 1998 Chevy Express van she’d fixed up herself until she could afford an apartment. She complains about the city’s permit fees, about how the cold is making her knuckles crack, and Manny finds himself telling her about the Westfalia he just finished, about the 1968 Airstream he’s got lined up for his next project, things he hasn’t told anyone but his dog in years.
The line dies down around 8, the sun dipping below the downtown skyline, painting the clouds pink and tangerine. She locks the front of the truck, hops down the metal steps, and stands next to him, close enough their shoulders brush when she shifts her weight. She tilts her head up at him, and her hand brushes his when she reaches down to grab her tool bag off the ground. She doesn’t pull away. For a split second, her fingers lace through his, just a quick, firm squeeze, and Manny’s chest feels so tight he can barely breathe. He knows he should pull away, knows Carla would lose her mind if she knew they were even talking, knows that fraternizing with your ex-wife’s cousin is the kind of drama he’s spent three years avoiding, but he doesn’t move.
“I close up early on Thursdays,” she says, nodding toward the 24 hour diner two blocks over, the neon sign flickering pink in the growing dark. “They make the best chocolate pie east of the Mississippi. Wanna come? I’ve got enough stories about Carla’s wild college years to keep you laughing for three hours. Fair warning, most of them involve her getting a tattoo she still thinks no one knows about.”
Manny doesn’t even hesitate. He tosses his empty beer can in the nearby trash, shoves his free hand in his jacket pocket, and nods. He follows her across the street, her van keys jangling in her other hand, the faint smell of cornmeal and coconut trailing behind her, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty garage.
