Javi Mendez, 52, makes his living patching rust, reupholstering dinette cushions, and rewiring the wonky electrical systems of vintage travel trailers from the 1950s and 60s. He’s got a scar snaking up his left wrist from a slip with a tin snip three years back, and a rule he’s enforced like federal law since he opened his shop outside Waco eight years prior: no dating clients. Widowed six months before he hung out his shingle, he’d built the business on the quiet routine of fixing what other people had let fall apart, and he’d long convinced himself that messing with personal connections would only break the one thing that kept him steady. His biggest flaw? He’d rather turn down a good time than risk looking like he didn’t take his work seriously, even if the good time was staring him right in the face.
He’d agreed to judge the annual town chili cookoff mostly for the free brisket samples and the chance to avoid a stack of work orders piling up on his shop desk. The air smelled like mesquite smoke and cumin, old George Strait cuts blaring from a speaker by the food trucks, kids darting between folding chairs chasing each other with lollipops sticky as molasses. He was halfway through his third chili sample, mouth burning so bad he was reaching for a bottle of sweet tea, when a denim sleeve brushed his bare forearm, soft and worn, and he smelled cedar soap mixed with a hint of vanilla perfume that made his chest tight.
He looked up, and it was Clara Hale, the woman who’d dropped off a dented 1968 Scotty Sportsman at his shop two weeks prior. He’d been so careful to keep their interactions strictly business then, only asking questions about water damage and paint preferences, never letting his eyes linger on the freckles across her nose or the way her laugh crinkled the corners of her eyes, even when she’d joked that she wanted the trailer fixed so she could stop sleeping in her Honda Civic on weekend camping trips. He’d nodded, scribbled notes, and walked her back to her car without asking a single personal question, kicking himself the whole way because he’d wanted to ask if she preferred hill country or coast camping, if she liked chili hot or mild, if she was single.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she said, leaning against the edge of the judge’s table so close he could feel the heat off her shoulder, her eyes locked on his like she knew exactly how flustered he was. “Thought you’d be holed up in that shop of yours, covered in rust dust.” He snorted, wiping chili grease off his jeans with a napkin, and for the first time in months he didn’t feel the urge to clam up and talk only about work. They traded jabs for ten minutes, her teasing him about giving the chili booth run by the local high school football team a 9 out of 10 just because one of the kids had a trailer restoration business plan he wanted to pitch, him teasing her about the fact that she’d put three layers of neon pink nail polish on half her fingers and forgot the other half.
The sun dipped low by the time judging wrapped, the sky turning soft orange and purple, and she nodded toward the beer tent at the edge of the park. “You gonna buy me a drink, or are you gonna keep acting like you don’t recognize me every time I stop by your shop?” He hesitated for half a second, that old rule bouncing around his head, but then he saw the way she was biting her lower lip to keep from smiling, and he stood up, already walking toward the tent before he could talk himself out of it.
They found a picnic table tucked under an oak tree, far enough from the crowd that they didn’t have to yell over the music, and she admitted she’d tracked him down specifically after seeing his restored 1961 Airstream at the county fair last summer. “I didn’t even need the Scotty fixed that bad,” she said, laughing, and he felt his face get warm. “I just wanted an excuse to talk to you. You looked so happy polishing that trailer, like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. I haven’t seen someone care that much about something in a long time.”
He sat quiet for a second, surprised, because he’d always thought people only saw him as the quiet guy who fixed trailers, not as someone worth seeking out. He reached for his beer at the same time she did, their hands brushing—calloused from her work as a veterinary tech and his from sanding metal—and he didn’t pull away. He told her about his wife, how they’d bought their first beat up trailer right after they got married, how he’d started the business after she passed because he couldn’t stand to sell the one thing they’d had that was all theirs. She didn’t look sad for him, didn’t give him that pitying smile people always did when he mentioned being widowed. She just nodded, squeezed his hand, and said “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. She would’ve loved that you’re making other people get to have that same joy.”
They talked until the fair lights started turning off, the crowd thinning out, and he walked her to her beat up pickup truck parked at the edge of the lot. He told her the Scotty would be done by the end of the week, and that he knew a spot by the Guadalupe River where the campsites were empty this time of year, if she wanted to test it out. She grinned, leaning in so her lips brushed his cheek, warm and soft, and he smelled that cedar vanilla perfume again. “Pick me up at 7 Saturday,” she said, climbing into her truck. “Don’t be late.”
He stood there in the dark for a minute after she pulled out, watching her taillights fade down the road, and realized he hadn’t been excited for a weekend that didn’t involve sanding or sealant in almost eight years. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, deleted the rule about not dating clients he’d typed into his notes app three years prior, and smiled.
