Ray Voss, 58, retired power lineman, held a butter-dusted ear of sweet corn in one hand and a sweating can of Busch Light in the other, leaned against the gnarled trunk of the oak tree at the edge of the town square’s annual corn boil. The air reeked of grilled brats, cut clover, and the sickly sweet cotton candy the teen volunteers were spinning by the bouncy house. A cover band slouched on the stage at the far end of the square, mangling a John Mellencamp track so bad Ray winced every time the lead singer flubbed a note. He’d avoided the festival for the last six years, preferring to spend his weekends fixing up his 1987 F-150 or hunting with the guys from the VFW, but his sister had begged him to come, said he was turning into a hermit now that the twins were living in Colorado. He’d told her to mind her own business, but showed up anyway, if only to get a free ear of corn.
He was watching a group of 7-year-olds chase each other with water guns when the impact hit his left side, cold iced tea seeping through the faded orange flannel he still wore even when the temperature hit 78. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” a woman’s voice said, and Ray looked down to see Clara Bennett, the town librarian, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt with a crumpled napkin from her purse. Her hand brushed his stomach through the fabric, warm, calloused at the fingertips, and Ray froze. He hadn’t been touched by a woman who wasn’t a grocery store cashier or his sister in seven years, not since Diane had passed.
He recognized her immediately. He’d dropped off three boxes of Diane’s old book collection at the library six months prior, including a first edition of *To Kill a Mockingbird* Diane had gotten for her 16th birthday. Clara had spent 20 minutes talking to him about it, had told him they’d put it in the library’s special local collection, had asked him if he wanted a tax receipt, and he’d mumbled no, scurried out of there before he could say something stupid, like how Diane had read that book to the twins every night when they were little.
“No harm done,” he said, wiping the corn silk off his jeans with his free hand. She was wearing wire-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down her nose, a faded flannel shirt tied around her waist, and scuffed white sneakers caked in mud, same as his work boots. There was a thin streak of silver running through her dark brown hair, right at her temple, and she had a scar on her left wrist, pale and thin, from when she’d fallen off a horse as a kid, she’d mentioned that during their last conversation. The air between them hummed, the noise of the festival fading into background static for half a second before a kid screamed as he got hit with a water gun, snapping them both back.
She gestured to the empty picnic bench off to the side, half hidden by a row of sunflowers, and he nodded, followed her over. They sat, their knees brushing when he shifted to set his beer down on the bench leg, and he tensed again, felt a twist in his gut, half shame half something else he hadn’t felt in so long he couldn’t name it. He’d spent the last seven years turning down every blind date his sister tried to set him up on, had told every guy at the VFW he was fine on his own, that he didn’t need anyone else, that Diane was the only woman he’d ever want. The idea of even talking to another woman for longer than five minutes felt like a betrayal, like he was breaking some promise he’d made to her when she was lying in that hospital bed.
But Clara didn’t push. She talked about the library’s new summer reading program, about the beagle puppy she’d fostered last month that had gotten adopted by a family with two little girls, about how she’d seen him last week out at the hiking trail, helping a little kid get his neon green kite stuck out of an oak tree. “You looked like you knew your way around a tall tree,” she said, laughing, and her hand landed on his forearm, warm, firm, stayed there for three full seconds before she pulled it back. Ray’s ears went red, he took a long sip of his beer to hide it, the cold liquid burning going down his throat. He hadn’t noticed anyone watching him that day, had been too busy laughing at the kid’s frantic jumping to see anything else.
They talked for another 45 minutes, the sun dipping lower in the sky, painting the clouds pink and orange, fireflies starting to blink on at the edge of the square. Every time one of them shifted their knees brushed, Ray kept glancing at her mouth when she talked, at the way she wiped a smudge of butter off her chin with the back of her hand, at the way her glasses slipped down her nose when she laughed. He forgot about the festival, forgot about the guys at the VFW, forgot about the photo of Diane he kept taped to his truck’s dashboard, for a little while, anyway.
When the band switched to a slow, sappy country song, Clara stood, gestured to the path leading down to the creek behind the square. “Wanna go for a walk? The music’s giving me a headache,” she said, and Ray nodded, stood, followed her. The grass was dewy under his boots, crickets chirping loud in the bushes, the sound of the festival fading the farther they walked. She stopped by a patch of wild blackberries growing along the creek bank, plucked one, held it out to him. “These are sweet this year. I pick them every summer,” she said.
Ray leaned in, took the blackberry from her, their fingers brushing, the fruit burst on his tongue, sweet, a little tart, and before he could think better of it, he leaned down, kissed her. It was soft, tentative at first, he was half expecting her to pull back, to slap him, to call him a creep, but she didn’t. She put her hand on the back of his neck, pulled him closer, her lips soft, tasting like iced tea and mint, and Ray forgot how to breathe for a second. He hadn’t kissed anyone but Diane in 36 years, had never even thought about it, but this felt right, not wrong, like he’d been holding his breath for seven years and finally got to exhale.
He pulled back after a minute, started stammering an apology, said he didn’t mean to overstep, that he hadn’t done this in forever, that he felt like he was doing something wrong. She laughed, pushed his shoulder gently, her fingers brushing his jaw. “I’ve been waiting for you to do that since you dropped off those books, Ray. I thought you’d never get the hint,” she said, and Ray blinked, dumbfounded. He’d had no idea she was even remotely interested, had thought she was just being nice that day at the library.
They talked for another 20 minutes, sitting on a fallen log by the creek, watching the fireflies blink over the water. She told him she’d lost her husband, a high school math teacher, to a heart attack three years prior, that she’d spent two years refusing to go on any dates, that she’d felt like moving on was betraying him, until her best friend had sat her down and told her that no one expected her to grieve forever, that being happy didn’t erase the love she’d had for him. Ray thought about the note Diane had left him before she died, scrawled in her messy handwriting, tucked in the pages of that *To Kill a Mockingbird* book, that said “Don’t be lonely for me, okay? Go live.” He’d ignored that note for seven years, had stuffed it in a drawer in his nightstand and never looked at it, but for the first time, he thought he might understand what she meant.
They walked back to the square as the last of the sun dipped below the horizon, the festival lights turning on, the band playing their final set. Before they stepped back into the crowd, she laced her fingers through his, squeezed once, soft, and he squeezed back, his calloused lineman’s hands wrapping around hers. They made plans to meet at the Main Street diner Saturday at 8 a.m., she said she got the blueberry pancake special there every weekend, he told her he got the same thing every Sunday, that they’d probably run into each other eventually even if they hadn’t made plans. She laughed, said that fate works in weird ways, then let go of his hand, waved as she walked to her beat up Subaru Outback with the “Adopt Don’t Shop” sticker on the back bumper.
Ray stood there for a minute, watching her car pull out of the parking lot, the cold can of beer he’d forgotten about still in his hand, warm now. He thought about the guys at the VFW teasing him if they found out he was going on a date, about the town gossip mill running wild when people saw them together, about the note in his nightstand, and he smiled, a real smile, the first one he’d had in years that wasn’t just for show. He tugged his flannel sleeve down to cover the faint sticky spot of iced tea she left on his arm, already counting the hours until Saturday.
