Rafe Marquez, 62, retired air show pyrotechnician, had only shown up to the eastern Oregon small town harvest fair because his 16-year-old niece begged him to man the 4-H youth fireworks demo booth for an hour while she ran to grab a corn dog. He’d spent the last decade holed up in his workshop restoring vintage model rockets, avoiding town events where everyone knew the story of how his wife left him for a fellow pyro tech three days after their 20th anniversary, leaving nothing but a note and a half-empty case of beer on the kitchen counter. He wore a faded navy NAPA work shirt, the cuffs frayed, his calloused hands permanently stained amber at the fingertips from decades of handling flash powder.
He was half-asleep leaning against the booth’s wooden frame, watching a group of 8-year-olds ooh over a display of child-safe sparklers, when Lena walked up. She was 58, his new next-door neighbor of six months, widowed two years prior when her husband, the town’s longtime Presbyterian pastor, died of a heart attack mid-sermon. Everyone in town treated her like she was made of fine china, too fragile for loud jokes or casual conversation, like she still wore her mourning veil 24/7 even if no one had seen her in one since the funeral. She carried a quart jar of clouded wildflower honey, her denim work shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a smudge of beeswax on her left cheek, her boots caked in mud from tending her hives that morning.
She stepped close enough that he could smell lavender hand cream mixed with the sharp, sweet scent of raw honey, and he tensed up automatically, ready to give her the short, polite brush-off he gave everyone who tried to pry into his quiet life. She held out the jar, her knuckles brushing his forearm when he reached to take it, and he jolted a little at the contact, warm and solid, not the tentative, gentle touch everyone else used when they handed him things, like they were scared he’d blow up if they moved too fast. “Raffle prize for the 4-H kids,” she said, and she held his eye contact longer than most people did, no quick glance away, no nervous smile, just a lazy little smirk like she knew he’d rather be anywhere else but there.
He mumbled a thanks, set the jar down on the folding table behind him, and tried to think of an excuse to leave, to go hide in the back of the booth until his niece got back. The last thing he needed was the town gossip mill churning because he’d been caught talking to the pastor’s widow. Half of him felt disgusted with himself for even noticing how her shirt fit snug across her shoulders, how her laugh crinkled the corners of her eyes when she made a joke about the mayor burning the BBQ ribs so bad they could be used as fire starters. He’d spent 12 years convincing himself he was better off alone, that he was too rough around the edges, too broken from his marriage ending, to be worth anyone’s time, and flirting with the woman everyone in town had deemed off-limits felt like tempting fate.
He stepped back, fumbled for the box of demo supplies at his feet, and mumbled something about checking the fuses, but she followed him around to the back of the booth, pulling a dented old metal bee smoker from the canvas bag slung over her shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to bring this by,” she said, setting it down on the table between them. “Found it in Paul’s old garage. Trigger’s broken. Figured someone who works with rocket parts could fix it easy.”
They both leaned over the table at the same time, their shoulders pressing together, and he didn’t move away. She pointed to the cracked plastic trigger, her finger brushing his when he reached out to tilt the smoker toward the light, and the noise of the fair faded for a second: the bluegrass band playing off on the main stage, the kids yelling, the crackle of the BBQ pit, all of it went quiet, like it was just the two of them standing there, the cool September wind blowing sawdust across their boots.
“Everyone thinks I’m still too sad to be talking to men like you,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear, and he froze, his hand still resting on the smoker. “Told me I should wait at least five years before I even think about going on a date. Like they get to decide when I’m done grieving.” She paused, and he could feel her eyes on his face, warm, not pushy. “I see you out watering your tomato plants every evening. You sing old Johnny Cash songs under your breath. You’re not as scary as you want everyone to think.”
He’d spent so long leaning into the gruff, loner persona he’d built for himself that it took him a second to respond. He admitted he’d been avoiding her, partly because he thought the town would run him out on a rail if he so much as looked at her the wrong way, partly because he thought he was too messed up from his marriage ending to be good for anyone. When he looked over at her, she was still smiling, no pity, no awkwardness, just that same lazy smirk, and he let his hand rest on the table next to hers, their pinkies brushing.
They made a plan: he’d fix the smoker by the end of the week, she’d bring him a jar of that same wildflower honey, and they’d have dinner at his place Friday night, no fanfare, no telling anyone until they felt like it. His niece came barrelling around the corner of the booth a minute later, ketchup on her shirt, yelling that the fireworks demo was supposed to start in five minutes. Lena slung her bag back over her shoulder, winked at him, and turned to walk back out into the crowd, her boot scuffing a line in the sawdust covering the street.
