Ray Voss, 58, retired TVA lineman with knuckles crisscrossed with old scar tissue and a stubborn streak wider than the Tennessee River, only showed up to the annual HOA block party because his next-door neighbor left a six-pack of his favorite vanilla porter on his porch at 2 p.m. with a note scrawled in crayon from her 7-year-old son begging him not to “yell at the new HOA lady.” He’d spent three months seething over the letter he’d gotten ordering him to take down his 30-foot flag pole, had taped the envelope to his fridge and thrown darts at it every night during commercial breaks.
The July humidity stuck to his forearms like a wet shirt as he leaned against a splintered pine picnic table on the edge of the park, sipping his porter and watching the chaos unfold. Kids screamed as they chased each other around the bounce house, the grill master a few tables over flipped burgers so hot fat spattered into the fire with a sharp crackle, and the new HOA president—Clara Bennett, 52, he’d looked her up on the neighborhood Facebook group just so he’d know who to glare at—darted between groups, hauling coolers, patching a tear in the bounce house with duct tape, and yelling at a group of teen boys who’d knocked over the lemonade stand. She wore high-waisted denim shorts frayed at the hems, a faded 2018 Alabama national championship tee, and work boots caked in mud, her light brown braid streaked with gray slipping over one shoulder, a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek from lighting the grills an hour earlier. He’d expected a stuck-up country club type, the kind that wore pearls to grocery runs and complained about grass length. He hadn’t expected calluses on her hands, or the way she laughed so hard at an old guy’s bad fishing joke she snort-laughed, loud enough that he heard it from 20 feet away.
She tripped over the leg of his picnic table ten minutes later, arms full of paper plates, and he reacted on instinct, reaching out to catch her by the waist before she face-planted into the dirt. Her skin was warm through the thin cotton of her tee, she smelled like citrus bug spray and grilled peaches, and her free hand clamped down on his forearm for half a second, rough calluses scraping against the sunburnt skin there. They locked eyes for four beats, long enough that he could see flecks of gold in her dark brown irises, long enough that he felt his throat go dry, before she steadied herself and pulled back, brushing grass off her shorts. “Thanks, Voss, right?” she said, a little smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knew exactly how mad he was at her. “Heard you’ve been avoiding all our events because you think I personally came for your flag pole.”
His first instinct was to make a snarky comment about HOA busybodies, to walk away and finish his beer in his truck. But he hesitated, staring at the charcoal smudge on her cheek, at the scar on her wrist that looked exactly like the ones he got when he grabbed a downed line back in 2011. “Old board sent that letter, didn’t they?” she said before he could speak, leaning against the picnic table across from him, close enough that their knees almost brushed when she shifted her weight. “I just got stuck mailing them. My dad was a lineman, had a 40-foot pole outside his house until the day he died. Thought yours was pretty badass, for what it’s worth. Rules say we can approve 12-foot poles without a hearing. I won’t tell anyone if you make it 14.”
The first firework went off overhead then, bright red, painting the whole park pink for a second, and the crowd cheered so loud he almost didn’t hear her when she leaned in closer, her breath hot against his ear, to say she’d been meaning to stop by his house all week to talk about it. The crowd pressed in around them as everyone moved toward the edge of the field to watch the show, and she ended up pressed shoulder to shoulder with him, their arms brushing every time someone squeezed past. He could feel the heat of her through his flannel shirt, could hear her quiet gasp every time a particularly bright gold firework burst overhead, and he fought the urge to wrap his arm around her waist again, to pull her closer, like he had when she tripped. He’d spent three months hating the idea of her, had built up this whole story in his head about a stuck-up rich lady who hated his way of life, and now he was standing here feeling like a 16-year-old kid working up the courage to ask a girl to the drive-in, equal parts embarrassed and giddy, disgusted at himself for liking someone who worked for the HOA and desperate to hear her talk more about her dad, about the old pickup she was fixing up in her garage.
He reached over halfway through the show, when the sky was lit up bright blue, and brushed the charcoal smudge off her cheek with his thumb. Her skin was soft there, warmer than he expected, and she didn’t flinch, just tilted her face toward him a little, her eyes glinting in the firework light. They didn’t say anything for the rest of the show, just stood there, shoulders pressed together, watching the sky light up.
After the last firework faded, everyone started packing up coolers and herding tired kids to their cars. He offered to carry her heavy soda cooler to her car, and she accepted, walking slow beside him down the dark street, telling him about her ex-husband who hated that she liked to fix engines and go mudding, who’d made her move to the suburbs before she left him and bought the little ranch house three streets over from his. He told her about the 1987 Ford F-150 he was restoring in his garage, about how he hadn’t had anyone to take test drives up to the mountain overlook with since his wife died five years earlier.
He set the cooler in the back of her beat-up Subaru, and she pulled a crumpled slip of notebook paper out of her pocket, scribbled her number on it in blue pen, and handed it to him. “Text me tomorrow,” she said, grinning, as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “We’ll get breakfast at that diner on Main Street, then go talk flag pole logistics. I’ve got a spare post hole digger you can borrow.”
He tucked the slip into the pocket of his flannel shirt, nodded, and watched her pull out of the driveway, the sound of her radio playing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” fading down the street. He pulled the crumpled HOA letter he’d been carrying in his jeans pocket for three months out, tossed it in the nearby trash can without a second glance.
