Manny Rios, 52, has spent the last eight years sanding rust off 1970s Hondas and tuning carburetors so well they purr like contented house cats. He runs a vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage in Northeast Portland, and his only consistent flaw is that he still treats his ex-wife’s side of the family like they’re made of glass, even after she left him for a real estate broker in Bend. He’s manning a booth at the local summer street fair when he sees her, wiping fried dough grease off the back of his work shirt, the twang of a bluegrass fiddle cutting through the hum of the crowd.
Lila is 44, his ex’s younger cousin, the one who used to sneak extra tamales off his plate at family cookouts back when he was still married. He hasn’t seen her in almost a decade. She’s got sun streaks in her dark wavy hair, a tiny silver nose ring he doesn’t remember, and she’s wearing a faded Ramones tee he swears he bought for his ex for their 10th anniversary. She leans over the booth table to hug him before he can react, her bare shoulder brushing the panther tattoo on his bicep, and he freezes for half a second, unused to casual, warm touch that doesn’t come from a regular customer slapping his back to thank him for a bike repair.
She’s in town for a pediatric travel nurse conference, she says, pulling a folding chair up to his booth and crossing her legs, her cutoff jean hem brushing his boot. He hands her a cold lime seltzer from his cooler, and their fingers linger when she takes it, the cold of the can seeping into both their skin. She doesn’t look away when he meets her eye, just smirks, like she knows exactly what she’s doing. He’s torn immediately, old family rules humming in the back of his head: you don’t mess with your ex’s relatives, it’s messy, it’s wrong, it’ll start drama that’ll spread all the way down to the annual family reunion in San Diego. But she’s laughing at his dumb joke about the time he dropped a full engine block on his foot at the 2018 cookout, and he can smell coconut sunscreen on her skin, mixed with the faint sweet smell of the cotton candy stand two booths over, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this light, like he doesn’t have to carry the weight of his failed marriage around in his pocket every second.
The crowd thins as the sun dips low, painting the west hills pink and orange. The bluegrass band packs up their instruments, and the food truck vendors start shutting down their grills. Manny packs up his leftover grips and stickers into a plastic bin, and offers to walk her to her car, parked three blocks over by the Willamette River footbridge. They walk slow, no rush, the cool evening breeze cutting through the leftover summer heat. She stops halfway across the footbridge, leaning against the rough weathered wood rail, and turns to face him.
She says she always had a crush on him, back when he was married. Says he was the only guy in the whole family who ever asked her about her nursing school exams, who didn’t cut her off when she talked about working in the ER. He admits he thought about her too, more than he should have, back then, that he’d lie awake next to his ex sometimes thinking about the way she smiled at him across the picnic table at those cookouts. He feels guilty saying it out loud, like he’s breaking some unwritten rule, but she just steps closer, so close he can feel the warmth off her skin, can taste the cherry lip balm she’s wearing when she tilts her chin up. He kisses her slow, no hurry, his calloused hand on her waist, warm through the thin cotton of her tee, her fingers tangling in the graying hair at the back of his neck.
They pull apart when a group of drunk college kids yells as they run past the bridge, both laughing, a little flustered. She gives him her hotel number, scribbled on the back of a custom grip price list, and tells him to meet her for breakfast at the diner down the street from her conference center at 8 a.m. He walks her to her car, leans against the curb while she pulls out, and she rolls the window down, blowing him a dramatic kiss before she turns the corner. He tucks the crumpled price list into his jeans pocket, already mentally mapping the fastest route to her hotel from his shop.
