Ray Voss, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighter, had avoided every neighborhood HOA event for 18 months straight. The retired smokejumper built custom Adirondack chairs out of reclaimed ponderosa pine out of his garage for extra cash, and he still held a grudge against the HOA for fining him $75 last spring for stacking his raw lumber 12 inches too close to his property line. The only reason he showed up to the August block party was his 12-year-old next door neighbor had begged him to bring the hand-painted cornhole boards he’d made the kid for his birthday, and Ray never could say no to that kid.
The air hung thick with the smell of charred hamburgers and cherry Kool-Aid, the asphalt under his scuffed work boots still holding the day’s heat even as the sun dipped pink over the foothills. He’d been leaning against the bed of his beat-up 2008 F-150, sipping a Coors Light and watching the kids chase each other with water guns, when he heard her voice. Lena Marlow, 54, the HOA president he’d only ever seen in tailored blazers yelling over meeting microphones about fence height restrictions, was leaning over the cornhole board, laughing so hard she snort-laughed when the beanbag the kid threw bounced off the edge and hit her square in the shoulder. She was wearing a cutoff denim work shirt, no blazer, the top two buttons undone, sun streaks in her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a messy braid, a spiked seltzer in one hand.
Ray’s jaw tightened. He’d left her a three-minute voicemail last month, full of very choice words, after she’d sent that second fine notice for the lumber pile. He’d crumpled the notice up and mailed it back to her with a drawing of a middle finger scrawled on the back. He fully expected her to march over and start yelling at him for not moving the lumber yet, or for the rusted fire pit in his backyard that the HOA kept complaining about.
She did march over, but she was grinning, holding the crumpled notice in her hand, the edges still smudged where he’d balled it up. She had to lean in to yell over the Toby Keith playing from the speaker propped on the truck hood, her bare shoulder brushing his sunburnt bicep when she stopped next to him. He could smell coconut sunscreen and the faint tang of lime from her seltzer, so close he could see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose that he’d never noticed at the stuffy HOA meetings.
“Nice drawing, by the way,” she yelled, holding up the crumpled paper. “I taped it to my fridge. My cat thinks it’s a masterpiece.”
Ray blinked, caught off guard. He’d expected yelling, not teasing. “You’re not here to yell at me about the lumber?”
She snort-laughed again, tilting her head back so he could see the faint scar along her jaw from a bike crash when she was a kid, she told him later. “That rule is garbage. The old board passed it before I took over, I’ve been trying to repeal it for three months. I only sent the fine because the old guard on the board made me. I would’ve sent you a heads up, but I figured you’d yell at me anyway.”
He stared at her, the anger he’d carried for months fizzling out faster than a wet match. He’d spent so long painting her as some stuck-up Karen who hated fun, he hadn’t bothered to learn she owned the independent bookstore downtown, the one he’d walked past a dozen times on his way to the hardware store, that she volunteered at the animal shelter on weekends, that she’d been a wildland firefighter for two years right out of college, before she’d gotten hurt in a burn over and switched to education.
They drifted away from the crowd, leaning against the chain link fence at the edge of the block, the noise of the party fading to a low hum behind them. When he handed her a cold beer from his cooler, their fingers brushed, and she didn’t pull away, just held eye contact a beat longer than polite, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle before she took the can. She told him she’d stopped by his garage a half dozen times over the last two months, had seen the Adirondack chairs stacked by the door, wanted to buy a set for the back patio of her bookstore, where she hosted open mic nights for local poets. He teased her about being the HOA president, did she need to get board approval for a purchase like that? She leaned in again, so close her breath tickled his ear, and said she was spending her own money, thank you very much, and she thought his chairs were worth every penny, even if he was a pain in the ass.
A group of kids ran past, chasing each other with water balloons, and one of them slammed into Lena’s back. She stumbled forward, right into Ray’s chest, and he caught her by the waist, his hands wrapping around the soft curve of her hips, her face inches from his. He could taste the mint of her gum when she exhaled, the top of her head brushing his chin, and for three full seconds neither of them moved. She didn’t pull away, just stared up at him, her lips slightly parted, a faint smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.
“You gonna keep holding me like you think I’m gonna fall,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear, “or you gonna ask me to come look at those chairs tomorrow morning?”
Ray didn’t hesitate. He told her 10am, to bring coffee, black if she had it, and she nodded, pulling away slow, her fingers brushing his wrist one last time before she turned to walk back to the party. She glanced over her shoulder halfway there, winked, and he stood there for a full minute after she was gone, staring at the spot she’d been standing, the ghost of her waist still under his palms.
She showed up at his garage at 9:57 the next morning, holding two black coffees and a paper bag of blueberry donuts from the bakery downtown, the sun catching the silver streaks in her hair as she leaned against his garage door frame, grinning.
