He doesn’t notice her until she’s standing a foot away, same rail between them, holding a cherry seltzer in a neon pink plastic cup. The first thing he spots is the tiny, thin scar above her left eyebrow, the one he gave her when he taught her to ride a dirt bike when she was 16, back when she was just Linda’s loud, snarky kid cousin who spent every summer at their cabin. Mara. She’s 48 now, moved to New York after college to work as a graphic designer, he hasn’t seen her in 12 years. The sun catches the streak of silver running through her dark auburn hair, pulled back in a loose braid, and she’s wearing a faded yellow sundress that hits just above her knees, scuffed white sneakers on her feet. She smirks when she catches him staring.
“Recognize the scar, huh?” She says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rough around the edges from too many years of smoking cigarettes she swears she quit. He laughs, surprised, and they lean in over the rail to talk over the band, their faces only a foot apart. She’s in town to settle her mom’s estate, she says, planning to stay for at least three months, maybe longer if she can work remotely. She teases him about the same beat-up U.S. Forest Service ball cap he’s worn for 15 years, he teases her about the fact she still puts way too much sugar in her iced coffee, a habit she picked up at his cabin. When she reaches across the rail to grab a napkin from the stack next to his hand, her bare forearm brushes his, warm and soft, and he flinches like he’s been burned.
The guilt hits him fast, hot and sharp, right in the chest. This is Linda’s cousin. He’s not supposed to notice how her eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs, how her sundress straps slip a little down her shoulders when she leans back, how the scent of her jasmine perfume cuts through the smell of fried dough and cut grass drifting over the fairgrounds. He tells himself he should make an excuse, leave, go home to his empty house and his half-disassembled truck. But every time he opens his mouth to say goodbye, she says something that makes him laugh, something only someone who knew him and Linda back when they were young and broke and camping out of the back of his old truck would know, and the urge to leave fades.
They move to a splintered picnic table in the shade a few minutes later, sitting across from each other, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifts. She tells him about her divorce three years prior, about how she got sick of New York’s noise and the constant grind, about how she’d been thinking of moving back west for years. He tells her about the hiking trip he took last spring to the alpine lake where he and Linda got engaged, how he didn’t cry for the first time when he went there. She nods like she understands, no pity in her eyes, just quiet recognition, and he feels something loosen in his chest he didn’t know was tight.
The first firework booms overhead right as the band finishes their set, red and gold bursts lighting up the darkening sky, and the crowd around them cheers. Mara jumps a little, startled, and slides closer to him on the bench, her shoulder pressed fully to his, warm through the thin fabric of his unbuttoned flannel shirt. She tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes glinting with the blue and purple bursts of the next round of fireworks, and her breath is warm against his jaw when she speaks, quiet enough only he can hear.
“Linda told me, right before she got sick, that if I ever found myself back here and you were still alone, I should stop being a coward and tell you I’ve had a crush on you since I was 17.” She says it like she’s been holding it in for years, no hesitation, and Cole freezes, his beer halfway to his mouth. The guilt is still there, faint, but it’s drowned out by a thrill he hasn’t felt in decades, warm and buzzing in his bones, the kind of thrill that comes with doing something you’ve been told is wrong for so long you forgot what it felt like to want something that bad. He doesn’t say anything for a second, just looks at her, at the scar above her eye, at the silver streak in her hair, at the way she’s not looking away, not embarrassed, not sorry.
He reaches up, brushes a stray strand of hair that fell loose from her braid off her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone soft, careful, like she might break if he moves too fast. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just leans into his touch a little.
They walk out of the fairgrounds together an hour later, when the fireworks are done and the crowd is thinning out, his calloused hand loosely wrapped around hers, the faint smell of cotton candy and fried oreos clinging to both their clothes. His truck is parked a block away, under a big oak tree, and she stops him on the sidewalk, tugs on his hand to pull him closer. She leans up, kisses him soft and slow, tastes like cherry seltzer and mint, and the distant ring of the fair’s last call bell echoes down the street as he kisses her back.
