Rafe Mendez is 52, runs a rare vinyl shop out of a cinder block building in East Austin, has for 17 years. He’s got a scar slashing across his left knuckle from a 1998 bar fight over a mislabeled Otis Redding promo, and a rule he’s stuck to for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 26-year-old barista with a sleeve of weed leaf tattoos: no messing with women more than 10 years younger than him. No exceptions. He’s at his monthly pop-up at the neighborhood beer garden on a mild October evening, the air thick with the smell of post-oak smoke from the brisket truck out front and the sharp, hoppy tang of IPA sloshing out of plastic cups. The sun’s dipping low, painting the live oak leaves gold, and the line of crate diggers has finally thinned out to nothing.
He’s flipping through a stack of unlabeled 7-inches he picked up at an estate sale earlier that week when a shadow falls over the table. He looks up, and for half a second he doesn’t place her. She’s got wavy dark hair streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, high-top white sneakers, a faded Stevie Ray Vaughan tee that hits just above her hips, and when she grins, the gap between her two front teeth clicks the memory into place. Lila. His best friend Joe’s daughter. Joe died three years prior from a heart attack mid-fishing trip, and Rafe hadn’t seen her since the funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight his ribs ached and told him she was moving to Dallas for a finance job. She leans over the table to reach for a stack of soul records, her bare forearm brushing his, and he catches a whiff of her perfume: jasmine and bright citrus, nothing like the cloying vanilla body spray she’d worn as a teen. “You still have that garbage Al Green record Dad used to play on my birthday?” she asks, holding eye contact long enough that his ears feel warm.
They talk for an hour, until the beer garden staff starts stacking chairs and turning off the string lights strung between the oaks. She tells him about the graphic design business she’s starting, he tells her about the 1967 Aretha Franklin test pressing he found at a garage sale in Waco the week prior. Every time she leans in to ask a question, her knee presses harder against his, every time she laughs, she touches his arm for half a second before pulling her hand away like she’s embarrassed. He keeps fighting the urge to tuck that strand of hair that keeps falling in her face behind her ear, keeps telling himself he’s a creep for noticing how the neckline of her tee gapes just a little when she leans forward, how her lips are the color of ripe cherries. He’s spent 12 years closing himself off, convincing himself all anyone wants from him is his rare records or his money, convinced himself romance was for dummies who didn’t mind getting their heart ripped out and thrown in the trash. But when she looks at him like that, like he’s not just Joe’s grumpy vinyl-collecting friend, like he’s someone worth showing up for three times in a row, that resolve cracks.
He’s packing up the crates when she grabs the heavy box of funk records off the end of the table, her hand brushing his as she passes it to him to load into the bed of his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150. “I made chili this morning,” she says, leaning against the side of the truck, her voice softer than it was a minute before. “I’ve got Joe’s old record player set up in my living room. You wanna come over? We can listen to that Al Green record, see if the scratch is still there.” He hesitates, his hand on the truck door, for exactly two seconds. He thinks about the guys at the beer garden who know both of them, who will definitely talk. He thinks about Joe, who would probably call him an idiot for overthinking it, then clap him on the back and buy him a beer. He thinks about 12 years of eating frozen dinners alone on his couch, of spending every holiday by himself, of convincing himself he didn’t deserve anything good.
He nods, and pulls the keys out of his pocket. She hops into the passenger seat, and when he turns the key, the opening notes of “Call Me” blare from the truck’s speakers, the track he’d queued up earlier that day on a whim. She hums along, tapping her boot against the dashboard, and when they stop at a red light two blocks from her bungalow, she reaches across the center console, brushes her thumb over the scar on his left knuckle, and smiles. He doesn’t pull away. When he pulls into her driveway, he grabs the Al Green record from the seat between them, turns off the truck, and follows her up the weathered wooden porch steps.
