Austin, Texas. Now-ish.
There are moments in life when time slows down.
Your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. The first time you realize you're the reason the fire alarm is going off in a vegan donut shop.
For Danny Ruiz, it was a Monday. 102 degrees. 4:45 p.m. He was on a borrowed electric scooter, gripping a paper bag of tacos, sweat cascading down his back like a guilty conscience. A child pointed at him and screamed, "That man looks like he's going to fall!"
The child was right.
Thirty seconds later, Danny was airborne. The bag ripped open mid-flight. Tacos spiraled like greasy origami. He landed in a dog bowl. The chihuahua did not forgive him.
A man wearing rollerblades and fairy wings leaned over and said, "Dude. Are you okay?"
Danny wiped queso from his eyebrow and muttered, "Define okay."
This is not how things were supposed to go. He had a plan once. Sort of. Go to film school (sort of did). Write a screenplay (started five). Get discovered (never happened). Be stable by thirty (ha).
Instead, he was pushing thirty-four, working gig jobs, living in a garage behind a house owned by a widow who once chased a possum with a Bible, and trying really hard not to be the kind of man who peaked in high school.
But this is Austin. The city where weird is a religion, and failure's just another word for pre-success. Danny's about to learn that rock bottom is a surprisingly good place to build something new—assuming he can stay upright long enough to do it.