Javier “Javi” Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a cinder block shop on the eastern edge of Austin. He’s avoided anything resembling a date since his wife packed her bags and left for Portland eight years prior, convinced any romantic entanglement would force him to sacrifice the quiet, uncomplicated routine he’s built: sanding fiberglass until his knuckles are raw, drinking Shiner Bock on his shop porch at sunset, watching 1970s Westerns alone on his beat-up couch. His biggest flaw, if you ask his older sister who calls every Sunday to nag him, is that he’d rather let a good thing pass him by than risk the mess of being disappointed.
He’d ducked out to the monthly east side food truck rally on a humid October Thursday mostly to get away from a particularly stubborn 1968 Winnebago wiring job, not to socialize. He’s leaning against the bed of his dented 1998 F-150, halfway through a brisket taco slathered in habanero sauce, when he spots her. Lena. The woman who’d picked up the 1972 Airstream he’d spent six months restoring three months prior. He’d noticed her then, of course—how she laughed at his dumb joke about the previous owner’s pet raccoon chewing through the dinette wiring, how she’d cried when she saw he’d tracked down the exact orange floral fabric her grandma had in the same Airstream model she’d grown up camping in. He’d kept his distance, though; she’d had a thin gold wedding band on her left hand, and he didn’t do married women, didn’t do clients, didn’t do any situation that came with extra drama.
She’s walking straight for him now, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, a paper tray of elote in one hand, a seltzer in the other. No ring. The scent of coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum hits him before she speaks, and when she leans in to yell over the noise of a mariachi band playing two stalls over, her bare shoulder brushes the flannel sleeve of his shirt, warm and soft through the thin cotton. She says she’s been meaning to text him, that she took the Airstream down to Big Bend for two weeks last month, that the little sunflower decal he’d stuck on the back window as a free surprise got three compliments from other campers at the park.
He finds himself leaning in too, closer than he talks to anyone who isn’t a longtime friend, so he doesn’t have to yell over the crowd. When a group of rowdy teens carrying giant snow cones cuts between them, she steps in closer, her knee brushing his, her hand brushing his forearm for half a second when she steadies herself. He can see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, the faint smudge of charcoal eyeliner at the corner of her lash line, the way she tucks a strand of wavy dark hair behind her ear when she laughs at his story about the Winnebago he’s currently fighting with.
The conflict hits him square in the chest before he can stop it. He’s disgusted with himself for even entertaining the thought of flirting with a former client—he’d learned that lesson the hard way 10 years prior, when a short fling with a woman who’d brought in a 1958 Scotty ended with her suing him over a leak he’d warned her about, costing him $7,000 in legal fees and almost shutting down his shop. His ex-wife had always accused him of being too friendly with clients, had said he’d cheat eventually, even though he never did, and the thought of proving her right makes his throat tight. He starts to make an excuse to leave, to say he has to get back to the shop, but she interrupts him, nods toward her silver 4Runner parked two rows over, says she has a bottle of mezcal in the cooler in her backseat, that it’s quieter over there, away from the crowd.
He follows her, even though every practical part of his brain is screaming that it’s a bad idea. The cab of her 4Runner smells like vanilla air freshener and pine, and she turns the radio down low to a Waylon Jennings deep cut when they climb in, hands him a small plastic cup of mezcal with a slice of lime. They talk for 20 minutes, about the Airstream, about her job teaching printmaking at the local community college, about how she left her husband six months prior after he admitted he’d been cheating for two years. When she reaches over to brush a fleck of fiberglass dust he’d missed off his cheek, her hand lingers on his jaw for three full seconds, and he doesn’t pull away. She says she’d thought about asking him out when she picked up the Airstream, but he’d seemed so closed off, so focused on the work, that she didn’t want to push.
He kisses her first, slow, the mezcal and lime on her tongue sharp and sweet, his hand resting light on her hip, the soft curve of her waist warm under his palm. He doesn’t overthink it, for the first time in years. When they pull apart, she grins, tucks that same strand of hair behind her ear again, asks him if he wants to come out to her 10-acre property west of town next weekend, help her install the solar panel setup she bought for the Airstream, says she’ll make brisket and her grandma’s famous peach cobbler for dinner.
He walks her to her driver’s side door when she says she has to head home to feed her rescue hound, and she squeezes his hand tight before she climbs in, winks, says don’t be late. He leans against the side of her truck for a minute after she pulls out of the lot, sipping the last of the mezcal she left with him, watching the taillights fade down the road. A mosquito bites his forearm, and he swats at it, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.