Ray Voss, 58, retired lineman with 32 years of patching power lines through Ohio blizzards and thunderstorms, leaned against the dented tailgate of his 1998 Ford F-150 and sipped a lukewarm Bud Light. The summer block party reeked of charred brats, citronella, and the sickly sweet seltzers all the neighbors were chugging, and he’d been avoiding Clara Bennett for 45 minutes straight. Clara was the new HOA president, 54, who’d fined him twice in six months: once for leaving his truck parked on the street overnight, once for flying a flag pole three inches taller than neighborhood code. He’d written her snarky emails, left passive aggressive notes on the HOA bulletin board, fully written her off as a stuck-up accountant with a stick up her ass.
She walked over before he could duck behind the cooler. She wasn’t in the crisp blazer and slacks he’d only ever seen her in, for once. She wore a faded 1987 Lynyrd Skynyrd tank top frayed at the hem, cutoff denim shorts that showed a faint scar on her left thigh from a childhood ATV wreck, cheap rubber flip flops with cherry red polish chipped at the edges. A smudge of charcoal streaked her left cheek, leftover from manning the grill an hour prior. “Got an extra beer?” she said, nodding at the half-empty case next to his boot. “The kid manning the coolers handed me a raspberry seltzer. Tastes like perfume that got left in a hot car.”
He grunted and fished one out, twisted the top off for her. She leaned against the tailgate next to him, close enough that their elbows brushed when she wrapped her hand around the cold can. He could smell the coconut sunscreen she wore under the faint smoky tang of grill smoke. She tapped her bare foot to the Tom Petty track blaring from the portable speaker two feet away, and he caught himself staring at the scar on her thigh before he snapped his eyes back up to her face. She was holding eye contact, a tiny smirk playing at the corner of her mouth, like she’d caught him.
She told him she grew up on a corn farm outside Toledo, her dad had been a lineman too, the Skynyrd shirt was her older brother’s, she’d stolen it when he joined the army in 1990 and never gave it back. She admitted she’d only made him take down the flag pole because the Karen two houses down had threatened to sue the HOA for “discriminatory landscaping” when he refused to scrape off the Trump sticker on his truck, and the association’s lawyer had said they’d lose if it went to court. “Fought it for two weeks,” she said, taking a long sip of beer. “Figured the fine was better than you getting dragged into a stupid lawsuit you couldn’t afford to fight.”
He felt the knot of resentment in his chest loosen, just a little. He’d spent three months pissed at her, ready to start a petition to get her removed from the HOA, and she’d been covering his back this whole time. She reached past him for the bag of salted peanuts sitting on the tailgate, her hand brushing his wrist for half a beat, and he felt the rough callus on her index finger from holding a pen 10 hours a day. She didn’t pull away immediately, just glanced up at him again, that same tiny smirk on her face.
The sky opened up without warning, a sudden summer thunderstorm dumping fat, cold raindrops that soaked through his t-shirt in 10 seconds flat. Everyone scrambled to grab coolers, folding chairs, half-eaten plates of potato salad, and he reached for the big 48-pack cooler at the same time she did. Their shoulders bumped, and a gust of wind blew a plastic lawn chair into the back of his legs, shoving him into her, their chests pressed together for a full two seconds before they both stepped back. Rain was dripping off the ends of her blonde hair, running down her neck and under the neckline of her tank top, and she was laughing so hard she snort-laughed, wiping water off her face with the back of her hand.
“Hey,” she said, when they’d hauled the cooler under the pavilion awning, out of the rain. “My back porch step rotted out last week. You got time to come fix it Thursday? I’ll pay you in homemade peach pie and a case of whatever beer you want. No HOA fine attached, promise.”
He smirked, wiping rain off the brim of his faded Ohio State baseball cap. “I’ll be there at 6. No charge, but you better have two slices of pie ready. None of that skinny little restaurant shit, either. The thick kind with extra crust.”
She nodded, squeezing his arm for a quick second before she ran off to help a kid who’d tripped in the mud and scraped his knee. He stood there for a minute, listening to the thunder rumble off in the distance, watching her kneel down to wipe the mud off the kid’s jeans with a paper towel. He lifted the half-empty beer to his mouth, took a sip, and realized for the first time in seven years he wasn’t dreading the end of a weekend.
