Javier Mendez, 52, makes his living sanding dents out of vintage caravan hulls and reconditioning rusted water pumps out of his backyard shop outside Lockhart, Texas. He’s avoided any casual social interaction that doesn’t involve dominoes or smoked brisket for eight years, ever since his ex-wife packed her bags and moved to Portland with a yoga instructor, and his biggest personality flaw is that he’d rather spend three nights rewiring a 1965 Airstream’s lighting system than make small talk with anyone the local gossip mill has labeled “single and available.” He’s at the VFW’s first post-mask-mandate fish fry on a humid September Saturday, work boots still caked with fiberglass dust, beer in one hand, paper plate of fried catfish in the other, deliberately keeping his back turned to the domino table where his buddies are already snickering and nodding toward the new town librarian.
He’d heard she’d been asking about him for three weeks, ever since she’d dropped off a stack of old caravan repair manuals at his shop’s front door when he was out on a parts run. He’d left a thank you note in the library’s drop box the next day and had avoided the building entirely ever since, terrified of the conversation he knew was coming. The air still smells like residual disinfectant and hickory smoke, everyone hovering a little closer than they would have a month prior, the unspoken thrill of being allowed to stand within arm’s length of a stranger still buzzing through the crowd.
She walks up to the beer cooler beside him before he can slip out to his truck, cutoff denim shorts showing freckled forearms and a smudge of potting soil on her left wrist, lavender and citronella candle scent clinging to her shirt from the community garden she’d tended that morning. She reaches for a lime seltzer, her shoulder brushing his bicep for half a second, and he freezes halfway to taking a sip of his Shiner Bock. “Was starting to think you were gonna avoid me forever,” she says, grinning, holding eye contact long enough to make his ears turn pink, the band on the stage cranking up a Johnny Cash cover loud enough that she has to lean in an inch closer to be heard.
He stumbles through a half-assed excuse about being swamped with work, and she laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the noise of the crowd. He’s torn between leaning in too, letting her shoulder press against his for longer, and bailing for his truck before the guys at the domino table start whooping loud enough for the whole hall to hear. He’s disgusted with himself for how fast his heart’s racing, how he can’t stop glancing at the way her hair falls over her shoulder when she tilts her head to ask about the Airstream he’s restoring, how he doesn’t even care that half the town is probably already watching them talk.
She nods toward the dirt path leading down to the creek behind the VFW hall when the crowd starts cheering for the band’s next song. “Wanna go get away from the noise?” she asks, and he glances back at his buddies, who are all pretending not to watch while blatantly holding up dominoes with numbers scribbled on them betting on how fast he’ll turn her down. He hesitates for two full seconds, then nods, shifting his beer to his other hand so their arms brush when she walks beside him down the path.
Their knuckles brush three times on the fifty yard walk to the oak tree at the edge of the creek, each contact sending a little jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in close to a decade. She stops by a fallen cedar log, reaches out to brush a fleck of fiberglass dust off the sleeve of his flannel, her thumb grazing his forearm for a beat longer than necessary. “I bought a beat up 1972 Scotty when I moved here,” she says, sitting down on the log, patting the spot next to her. “All the repair guides I found had your name scribbled in the margins from the previous owner. Figured you were the guy to ask.”
He sits down, leaving an inch of space between them, the sound of the creek gurgling over rocks mixing with the faint sound of the band from the hall. She pulls a peppermint from her jacket pocket, passes it to him, their fingers lingering against each other when he takes it. He unwraps it, pops it in his mouth, doesn’t make any of the excuses he’d rehearsed in his head for weeks about being too busy, about not wanting to get involved with anyone new. When she leans back against the tree, her shoulder pressing solidly against his, he doesn’t move away.