Elias Voss, 58, has run a vintage Honda restoration shop out of his detached garage in southeast Portland for 22 years. He hasn’t attended a single neighborhood block party since his wife left him for a corporate real estate broker eight years prior, hates the way neighbors sidle up with fake sympathetic grins and nosy questions about when he’ll “get back out there.” The only reason he’s standing over a charcoal grill at 6 PM in 83 degree heat now is his 19-year-old next door neighbor Lila begged him, crying that her dad bailed on grill duty last minute to go on a date with his new girlfriend.
Sweat sticks the collar of his faded denim work shirt to his neck, he’s got grease under his fingernails he couldn’t scrub out even after three washes, and he’s already turned down three separate invitations to join the cornhole tournament on the front lawn when Marisol Reyes walks up. He’s seen her around, knows she moved into the pale blue bungalow three blocks over three months back, has heard the neighborhood gossip: that she kicked her husband out with only a suitcase and his golf clubs, that she slept with the 22-year-old kid who does lawn care on the block, that she’s “too much trouble” for anyone his age to bother with. He’d written her off as a distraction he didn’t need, until she’s standing three inches from him, wearing a white tank top spotted with tomato plant sap, a frayed plaid flannel tied around her waist, silver nose ring glinting in the golden hour light.
She holds out a crumpled paper plate, her nails painted chipped forest green, and her shoulder brushes his bicep when she leans in to grab a dill pickle off the platter next to the grill. He catches the scent of lavender lotion and fresh turned soil under the faint smell of craft beer on her breath, and his throat goes tight for a second, a feeling he hasn’t had since he was 17 fumbling with his first girlfriend’s bra in the back of his dad’s beat-up F150. “Heard you’re the guy who fixes the old Hondas,” she says, nodding toward his driveway where his fully restored 1972 CB750 is parked under a frayed canvas cover. “I had one just like that when I was 20. Dropped it on a gravel road outside Bend, still have the scar on my hip to prove it.”
Elias fumbles the metal tongs he’s holding, they clatter loud against the asphalt. He bends to grab them at the same time she does, their heads knock together hard enough to make his ears ring, and she laughs, a low, warm sound, and rests her hand on his knee for half a second to steady herself before she pulls back, handing him the tongs. He’s red in the face when he stands back up, stammers out an offhand offer to let her sit on the bike sometime if she wants, and she grins, leaning in a little closer so no one passing by can hear. “I don’t wanna just sit on it,” she says, and her voice is low, teasing, no edge of desperation he’s come to expect from the few women who’ve flirted with him in recent years. “I want you to take me for a ride.”
He freezes for a second, ready to turn her down, ready to go back to his quiet routine of working on bikes, drinking beer alone on his porch, watching old spaghetti westerns on Saturday nights, but he meets her eyes, dark, steady, no games, and he nods. By 9 PM most of the party has cleared out, the kids are all home in bed, the cornhole boards are stacked by the curb, and they’re sitting on his front porch steps sharing a can of Pabst he pulled out of his garage cooler. She tells him the lawn care kid everyone’s gossiping about is her nephew, came down from Seattle to help her rebuild her back fence after the winter ice storms, that the whole neighborhood made up the story because she told the local HOA president she wasn’t going to rip out her native wildflower garden to plant uniform Kentucky bluegrass like everyone else on the block. Elias feels stupid for believing the gossip, for writing her off before he even said two words to her.
She shifts closer on the step, her bare knee pressed flush to his denim-clad one, and runs a light finger along the pale, jagged scar running up his left forearm, the one he got last year when a motorcycle chain slipped while he was tightening it after a test drive. “How’d you get that?” she asks, her voice soft now, no teasing left. He tells her the story, and when he’s done she doesn’t pull her hand away, just traces the edge of the scar again, slow, like she’s memorizing the shape. He tilts his face toward hers, slow, no rush, and their lips brush, light at first, then firmer, and she tastes like cherry popsicle and cheap beer, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, calloused from pulling dandelions and thistles out of her garden beds.
When they pull back a minute later, she grins, and nods toward the CB750 under the canvas cover. “You free tomorrow at noon?” she asks. He pulls his cracked old smartphone out of his pocket, taps the screen twice to cancel the two minor repair appointments he had scheduled for the day, no second thoughts, no hesitation.
