Manny Ruiz showed up to the West Maple Street block party only because his 16-year-old next-door neighbor Javi begged him to bring the batch of kid-safe sparklers he’d mixed up the weekend prior. At 57, a retired airshow pyrotechnics specialist who’d spent the eight years since his wife’s death mostly holed up in his garage testing fuse burn times and avoiding small talk, he’d turned down the annual invite every year leading up to this one. He hovered by the rented beer cooler in a faded 2018 airshow team hoodie even as the 82-degree heat beaded sweat on his forehead, the thin white scar across his left knuckle peeking out from the cuff when he twisted the cap off a Pabst.
He’d seen Clara around the neighborhood before, of course. She’d moved into the blue bungalow three doors down three months prior, worked as a youth services librarian at the downtown branch, waved at him every time she pulled into her driveway even when he was too gruff to wave back. That day she was wearing a loose linen sundress the color of wild clover, her bare feet in scuffed white leather sandals, holding a crumpled paper plate stacked high with peach cobbler as she laughed at a retired mailman’s bad fishing joke across the yard. He’d been half curious, half actively avoiding her for weeks, unused to anyone new moving onto the block who didn’t immediately recognize his name and offer that sad, pitying tilt of the head when they realized he was the guy whose wife didn’t come home from the grocery store one rainy Tuesday.
She spotted him before he could duck behind the cooler. She lifted the plate in a small salute and walked over, the hem of her dress swishing against her calves, the faint smell of lavender fabric softener and lemon polish wrapping around him before she even stopped. She held the plate out without preamble, said the old ladies at the church bake sale had given her three helpings and she couldn’t finish it all alone. He reached for the plastic fork she held out, and the tips of their fingers brushed. He flinched before he could stop himself, hadn’t felt the bare skin of someone who wasn’t a cashier or Javi in longer than he could remember.
She noticed the scar when he pulled his hand back, arched one eyebrow and asked about it instead of apologizing for the accidental touch. He told her about the 2019 misfire, a fuse that burned three times faster than his tests had predicted, caught him off guard when he was setting up a display for a high school graduation. She didn’t wince or give him that pitying look, just nodded and said that sounded like the kind of scar you brag about, not hide under a hoodie cuff in the middle of summer. He felt a weird, tight twist in his chest then, half disgust at himself for being so skittish around a woman bringing him cobbler, half warm, unnameable pull he’d thought he’d buried with Elena. They talked for 20 minutes, her leaning in a little when he explained how he mixed copper sulfate to get that bright blue spark in his custom fireworks, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of screaming kids ran past chasing an ice cream truck. He could hear the distant cover band fumbling through a Tom Petty deep cut, the crinkle of her paper plate when she shifted it between her hands, the sticky, cold condensation of the beer cooler seeping through the back of his hoodie where he leaned against it.
The block party committee announced 10 minutes later that the kid they’d hired to light the small pre-fireworks display had bailed last minute to go to a concert in Columbus. Manny volunteered before he could think better of it, and he caught the way Clara’s face lit up when he said it. She followed him to the edge of the small park where the mortars were set up, offered to hold his extra lighter when he fished it out of his hoodie pocket. He told her to stand back at least 10 feet, said fuses were unpredictable even when you tested them 10 times. She shook her head, said she trusted him.
He lit the first mortar, it burst bright pink over the oak trees at the edge of the park, and she gasped, grabbing his arm hard enough that her fingers pressed into the muscle through his hoodie. He didn’t pull away. The next burst was gold, then green, then that bright blue he was so proud of, and when he glanced down at her she wasn’t looking at the sky. She was looking up at him, her face lit up in shifting, bright color, her mouth slightly open in a small, soft smile. The tight twist in his chest unspooled then, the guilt he’d carried for years about even thinking of talking to another woman fading fast, the disgust he’d felt earlier at his own skittishness melting into something light and warm.
The last firework faded to smoke, the crowd on the block cheered, and she didn’t let go of his arm for another full 10 seconds. He asked her if she wanted to come by his garage the next afternoon, said he was testing a new batch of deep purple sparks he’d been tinkering with for months, and he baked churro cookies every Saturday that went great with iced coffee. She said yes, grinning, tucking a strand of wind-tousled brown hair behind her ear, brushing the scar on his knuckle with her thumb when she finally pulled her hand away. He walked her to her front porch after the party wrapped up, the streetlights coming on one by one as they trundled down the block. An hour later, he heard a soft tap on his front door, opened it to find a tupperware of leftover peach cobbler on his step, a sticky note with her cell number scrawled in sparkly purple pen taped to the lid. He set the tupperware on his kitchen counter, peeled the note off, and popped a bite of cobbler into his mouth, sweet and warm and perfectly spiced, as he typed her number into his phone.
