Manny Ruiz, 52, has spent the last eight years restoring vintage Japanese motorcycles out of a cinder block garage in east Austin, and the last eight years avoiding anything that even smells like romantic entanglement. His ex-wife left him for a part-time Elvis impersonator who couldn’t change his own oil, and he’d sworn off the whole mess, convinced the hassle of letting someone new into his space wasn’t worth the inevitable crash and burn. His only consistent company was his pit bull Chico, a twelve-year-old couch potato who only got excited when the local taco truck dropped off leftover carnitas scraps.
He’d set up a foldout table at the neighborhood fall block party to sell custom tooled leather handlebar wraps, a side gig he mostly did for fun, when she walked up. He’d only seen her in passing before, the new neighbor who’d moved into the blue bungalow three doors down three months prior, waving from her porch when he walked Chico at dawn. She leaned over the table to get a closer look at a set of black wraps stamped with tiny coyotes, her forearm brushing his as she reached out to run a finger over the tooling, and he caught a whiff of jasmine hand lotion and the roasted pecans she’d clearly just grabbed from the snack stand at the end of the block. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of pink lemonade on her jaw, and she held eye contact when she looked up at him, no quick dart away, no awkward grin, just a slow, knowing smile.
She bought a set of wraps for her 1978 Honda CB750, a bike he’d spotted in her driveway a few weeks prior, and they chatted for ten minutes about the headache of getting old carburetors tuned right in Austin’s humidity, the way the city’s new transplants kept jacking up rent on old garages, the terrible mariachi cover band playing at the end of the block that kept butchering Johnny Cash covers. He was laughing so hard at her impression of the lead singer’s off-key ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ that he almost missed it when she mentioned her cousin Carla, the name hitting him like a cold splash of beer to the face.
Carla was his ex-wife. He tensed immediately, pulling his hand back from where he’d been pointing out a flaw in the wrap he was holding, his jaw tightening. He’d promised Carla when they split he’d never mess with anyone in her family, a stupid, drunken promise he’d made when he’d still been hurt enough to agree to anything just to get her out of his house. He shifted back on his heels, ready to make an excuse to pack up early, when she laughed, soft and low, and leaned in a little closer, close enough he could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes.
“I know who you are, Manny,” she said, her shoulder brushing his now, no space between them at the edge of the table. “Carla talked about you all the time at family reunions. She also talked about leaving you for a guy who thinks synthetic oil is a government conspiracy. I haven’t spoken to her in four years, for the record. She stole my mom’s vintage diamond ring to pawn for a down payment on an Elvis themed wedding venue.”
The tension drained out of his shoulders so fast he almost laughed. He’d spent eight years carrying around that stupid promise, that stupid guilt, for a woman who’d left him for a guy who wore sequined jumpsuits to grocery runs. He looked down at her, at the smudge of lemonade still on her jaw, at the calluses on her fingers from working on her bike, and felt a heat he’d forgotten he could feel curl low in his stomach.
They snuck off ten minutes later, leaving his half-empty cooler of beer on the table, to the shaded alley behind the carnitas taco truck, where the music was muted and the only people passing through were kids sneaking pixie sticks from the candy stand. She pushed him gently back against the sun-warmed brick wall, her palm flat on his chest over his faded Worn Free flannel, and he didn’t resist. Her breath was warm on his neck when she leaned in, her other hand resting light on his hip, and he could hear the faint crunch of corn chips from a kid darting past the alley mouth, the distant whoop of a kid chasing a dog through the crowd, but all he could focus on was the way her hand fit against his chest, like it belonged there. He brought his own hand up to rest on her waist, the soft cotton of her own flannel shirt worn thin at the edges, and when she tilted her head up to kiss him, he didn’t think about Carla, didn’t think about stupid old promises, didn’t think about anything but the way her lips tasted like peach iced tea and pecan candy.
They stayed there for ten minutes, slow, lazy kisses, no rush, no pressure, until someone yelled her name from the end of the alley and she pulled back, grinning, wiping a smudge of his motorcycle grease off her cheek. She helped him pack up his table an hour later, teasing him nonstop about the chewed-up Chihuahua keychain on his bike keys that Chico had destroyed when he was a puppy, and he didn’t even argue when she said they should stop for margaritas at the dive bar down the street before heading back to his place to look at the spare carburetor he’d promised her he had in his garage. When she laced her fingers through his to walk across the street to the bar, he didn’t even glance over to see if anyone they knew was watching.
