Javier Mendez, 52, has restored 78 vintage motorcycles in the six years since his wife Clara died, and he’d rather spend a weekend covered in gear oil than make small talk at the town’s annual summer street fair. But he’d entered his fully restored 1972 Honda CB750 in the show, and when the judge handed him first place, he’d stuck around long enough to grab a cold hazy IPA from the beer tent, leaning against the chipped red brick of the general store to avoid the crowds of families chasing toddlers and teens darting between food trucks. The air smells like fried Oreos, hickory smoke from the barbecue stand, and cut grass, the country cover band off on the main stage cranking out a twangy version of a Tom Petty track loud enough that he can feel the bass thud in his boots.
He’s halfway through his beer when Maeve Carter steps into his line of sight, two paper plates piled high with smoked brisket and coleslaw in one hand, a cold can of root beer in the other. She moved back to town three months prior, opened a breakfast taco truck on the edge of his shop’s parking lot, and he’s spoken to her exactly twice: once to complain that her regular customers were taking up his shop’s client parking, once to help her jump her truck’s dead battery. He’d avoided her beyond that, clinging to the half-remembered promise he’d made Clara the week before she died, that he’d never mess up their tight-knit friend group by dating anyone they both knew. He’d blocked out the rest of that conversation, the part where Clara laughed and said Maeve had been sweet on him since they were all in their 20s, that if he ever found himself ready to stop grieving, she’d want him to give her a shot.