Javier Mendez, 52, has been restoring vintage outboard motors out of his cinder block shop on Florida’s Apalachicola Bay for 17 years. He’d avoided the county fair for six straight years after his ex-wife left him for his boat racing co-pilot, but his regulars begged him to set up a booth this year, said the tourist crowd would snap up his smaller display motors as mantel pieces. It was 8:17 PM by the faded analog watch on his wrist, crowds thinning fast, the neon glow of the Ferris wheel painting the edge of his booth pink, peanut shells crunching under his scuffed work boots, when he heard the laugh. He’d know that laugh anywhere, sharp and warm, the same one he’d heard echoing through his old high school shop teacher’s garage when he was 18, grabbing extra carburetor parts after class.
She leaned against the edge of his booth, worn denim jacket slung over one shoulder, red chipped nail polish matching the candy stripe on the 1962 Evinrude he’d been buffing ten seconds prior. She said his name like she’d been practicing it, and when he looked up, her hazel eyes held his for two beats longer than casual. He froze for half a second, half convinced he was imagining it. She was Lila Hale, Mr. Hale’s kid, the one who’d snuck sips of his root beer from the shop cooler when she was 14, who’d drawn terrible stick figure pictures of him covered in motor grease and taped them to his toolbox. The one he’d never let himself look at too long, even when she’d graduated college and stopped coming around the shop, because even then it felt like crossing a line he wasn’t supposed to touch.
She leaned in a little further to point at the tiny brass carburetor he had displayed on a reclaimed cedar shelf, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he caught the scent of lavender perfume mixed with cotton candy and the faint, antiseptic tang of hospital hand sanitizer. She said she’d just finished a three month travel nurse stint in an Atlanta ICU, spent most of her days holding the hands of patients who couldn’t see their families, and when she’d seen his name painted on the booth sign when she walked in, she’d scrapped her plan to meet her dad for funnel cake and head home early. He nodded, wiping his greasy hands on the leg of his faded Carhartt pants, his chest tight. He’d spent the last seven years turning down every advance, from the bait shop clerk who brought him free black coffee every Saturday to the single mom who’d brought her dad’s old 1957 Johnson in for repair last spring, convinced any new connection would just blow up in his face. He told himself he was an idiot for even noticing the way her high waisted jeans fit, for tracking the little scar on her left wrist from when she’d crashed her bike into his tool chest when she was 16, that this was wrong, that Mr. Hale would tan his hide if he knew what he was thinking.
The fair’s loudspeaker crackled to life, announcing the grounds would close in 15 minutes, and the last of the nearby booth vendors packed up their pickup trucks, leaving the two of them alone under the warm yellow string lights strung above his stall. She reached for the same brass carburetor he’d been about to tuck into his foam-lined storage bin, and their hands brushed. His palm was crisscrossed with calluses from turning wrenches for 30 years, hers was rough along the index finger from taping IV lines down for 12 hour shifts, and neither of them pulled away. She held his eye, the corner of her mouth tugging up in that same half-teasing grin she’d had as a kid, and said she’d had the biggest crush on him when she was 14, used to make up excuses to stop by the shop just to see him covered in grease, even if he only ever grunted and handed her a root beer. He laughed, surprised, and admitted he’d noticed, but never said a word because she was too young, too off limits, too much of a good thing for a guy who’d only ever been good at breaking motors and messing up relationships. She didn’t let go of his hand. She said she wasn’t 14 anymore, and he didn’t seem all that messed up to her.
He locked up his booth 10 minutes later, stashed the last of his motors in the bed of his beat up Ford F-150, and followed her dented silver Honda Civic down the dark two lane road to the dive bar just outside the fairgrounds, the little brass carburetor tucked in his jacket pocket, the hum of the Ferris wheel fading soft behind them.
