Manny Ruiz is 52, makes his living restoring vintage Japanese motorcycles out of the two-car garage attached to his South Austin bungalow, has a flaw of holding grudges so tight his shoulders have been knotted solid since his wife left him for a 28-year-old real estate broker 11 years prior. He avoids all neighborhood events like they’re contagious, only showed up to the end-of-summer block party because the retired teacher next door dropped off a peach cobbler still warm from the oven two days earlier and begged him to make an appearance, and he’s never been able to say no to a woman who bakes that well.
The air smells like charcoal lighter fluid, cut St. Augustine grass, and cheap domestic beer sweating through aluminum cans. He’s perched on a wobbly plastic folding chair at the edge of the crowd, picking at a plate of brisket someone handed him, half paying attention to a group of guys arguing about college football, when a bare arm brushes his shoulder as someone reaches for the seltzer stack in the cooler at his feet. He catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm, looks up, and his throat goes dry.
It’s Lena Marquez, his ex-wife’s youngest cousin. He hasn’t seen her since his wedding day 22 years earlier, when she was 19 and showed up with a busted old mountain bike she wanted him to fix, which he did, stayed up until 3 a.m. replacing the chain and patching the tires, no charge. She’s 41 now, hair streaked with honey blonde, wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Willie Nelson t-shirt, a silver septum ring glinting when she grins. She sits down on the folding chair next to him without asking, their knees brushing through the worn denim of their jeans, and says she knew it was him the second she saw his tattoo of a Honda CB750 peeking out from under his work shirt sleeve. She moved to the neighborhood three months earlier, she says, took a job running the young adult section at the public library down the street, had no idea he lived here until she spotted him across the lawn.
Manny’s first instinct is to make an excuse and leave. His ex-wife still talks enough shit about him to half their extended family, and getting caught hanging around her cousin would set off a drama bomb that would reach all the way to San Antonio, where most of the family lives. He shifts back in his chair, takes a long sip of his beer, tries to keep his tone casual, but she leans in when she responds, shoulder pressed to his bicep, voice low enough only he can hear, says she never thought her cousin deserved him, says she still has that mountain bike he fixed, kept it all these years even when she moved four different times.
He doesn’t move away. He watches her gesture with her beer can, the silver ring on her index finger catching the golden light of the setting sun, and lets himself listen. She tells him about the guy she left back in Dallas, a chef who lied about every other thing that came out of his mouth, about the rescue cat she just adopted that keeps knocking over her potted herbs, about the beat up 1972 CB350 she bought off Facebook Marketplace last week that she has no clue how to fix. Her hand brushes his when she passes him a bag of spicy pickles someone set on the table between them, her thumb grazing his knuckle for half a second, and he feels a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt since before his ex left.
The sky turns deep purple, the kids go home with their parents, the college football argument breaks up when one guy’s wife yells for him to bring the cooler back to the house. A group of teen boys set off small firecrackers in the street, popping bright red and gold against the dark. Lena tugs lightly on his wrist, her fingers warm from holding her beer, and says she has a bottle of small-batch bourbon sitting on her kitchen counter, if he wants to come over and take a look at that CB350, tell her if it’s worth sinking money into.
Manny hesitates for exactly two seconds. He thinks about the angry text messages his ex would send if she found out, about the side-eye he’d get from family at the next Christmas dinner, about the walls he’s built around himself over the last 11 years that no one’s even come close to cracking. Then he looks at her, grinning, eyes bright in the glow of the streetlight, and he stands up.
His old hound dog Red follows them halfway down the block, then turns and trots back to his porch, like he knows he’s not invited. Lena unlocks her front door, flips on the entryway light, and sure enough, the CB350 is parked right inside, dented gas tank, rusted exhaust pipes, all of it. Manny runs a calloused hand over the tank, can already picture how it would look sanded down and repainted candy apple red, and he feels her step up next to him, her hip pressed firm to his, when she reaches up to brush a fleck of firework ash off his jawline. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just lets his hand rest on the cool metal of the bike and holds her gaze when she drops her hand to his chest, right over the slow, steady thud of his heart.
