He’s torn, for the next hour they talk, between the voice in his head that screams Manny would kill you if he saw you looking at his little sister like that and the part of him that’s been starved for attention that isn’t about neon tube pricing or the best way to remove rust from 50-year-old sign casings. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 17, used to beg Manny to bring her to work sites just so she could see him, thought he was the toughest, quietest guy she’d ever met. He listens, his mouth dry, as she says she’d been nervous to talk to him at first, scared he still saw her as the annoying kid who stole his root beer at every work barbecue.
By the time the festival starts shutting down, the sun dipping low over the ocean and painting the sky streaks of pink and tangerine, they’re standing so close their shoulders brush every time one of them shifts. She smells like coconut sunscreen and the peach hard seltzer she’s been sipping all afternoon, and when she tilts her head up to look at him, her dark eyes glinting in the glow of the neon signs around them, he doesn’t even think about the rules he’s spent eight years living by. He leans down, and she meets him halfway, her hand coming up to curl around the back of his neck, the cool of her silver wave rings a sharp contrast to the heat of his sun-warmed skin. The kiss is slow, unrushed, no messy fumbling or urgency, just the quiet shock of two people who’ve been waiting for something they didn’t think they were allowed to have.
