Ray Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has spent the eight years since his wife Linda died avoiding all social invitations, filling his days restoring vintage furniture for the local parks department. His only rule, unspoken but ironclad: he will never even consider dating, not when Linda’s memory still sits at his kitchen table every morning when he drinks his coffee. He only agrees to show up to the parks department’s annual summer beer garden fundraiser because he donated three hand-planed Adirondack chairs to the silent auction, and the director cornered him at the hardware store and said he owed the town a cameo.
Mid-July in western Michigan, the air smells like charred bratwurst, citronella, and cut clover. String lights crisscross between the old softball dugouts, a cover band plays wobbly 80s country, and Ray hovers by the beer stand with a cold Bell’s Two Hearted, condensation dripping down his wrist onto the frayed cuff of his work flannel, edging toward the exit for 20 minutes straight when he hears her laugh.
Marnie Carter, 59, Linda’s best friend since they were 16, just finalized her divorce three weeks prior after her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old real estate agent. Ray has known her 36 years, always saw her as the loud, margarita-toting sidekick from their annual lake trips, the woman who dropped off frozen lasagna at his door every week for six months after Linda died. He never looked at her any other way, not until tonight.
She walks over holding a black cherry seltzer, a faded denim jacket covered in old concert patches slung over her white linen tank, sun freckles dark across her nose that he swears weren’t there when he saw her at the grocery store two months prior. She stands close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen, the same brand Linda used to buy, and when she teases him about the guy bidding $75 on his 40-hour chairs, she swats his bicep, her palm warm through the thin flannel.
He snorts, says he’ll burn the chairs before he takes that lowball, and when they both reach for the same dill pickle off the shared counter, their knuckles brush. A jolt shoots up his arm, hot and sharp, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a running saw blade. Guilt twists his stomach immediately, like he’s cheating on Linda, breaking the rule he made for himself the day she took her last breath. He mumbles an excuse to leave, but she grabs his wrist, her fingers light around his bone, and says she’s not letting him run off like he always does.
She asks him to walk her to her car, says the side street parking lot is dark, and she doesn’t feel like walking alone. He agrees, even though he knows she keeps a taser in her purse, even though the lot is only two blocks away and lined with streetlights. They walk slow, grass soft under their work boots from the afternoon rain, fireflies blinking low over the ditch beside the sidewalk, the band’s version of “Amarillo by Morning” fading behind them.
She mentions the cedar chest Linda gave her for her 40th birthday, that the hinge broke last week when she was pulling out old photo albums, that she didn’t know who else to ask to fix it. Ray nods, says he has solid brass hinges that match in his workshop, the same kind he taught his shop students to install. She stops when they reach her beat-up Subaru Outback, leans against the driver’s side door, and looks him right in the eye, streetlight catching the silver streaks in her dark hair.
She tells him she’s had a crush on him since 1998, when her ex bailed on picking her up from the hospital after appendix surgery to go golfing, and Ray drove three hours each way to get her, stopping at her favorite taco stand on the ride home without even telling Linda why he was gone. She says she never would have said anything while Linda was alive, or while she was married, but now they’re both free, and she’s tired of wasting time.
Ray freezes, his half-full beer still in his hand, because he’s thought about that day more times than he’d ever admit. He’d lied to Linda then, said he was going to a woodworking supply convention in Grand Rapids, because he didn’t want her to think he was crossing a line even back then, didn’t want to admit he’d liked being the one she called when she needed help.
He sets his beer on the hood of her car, takes a step closer so their boots almost touch. He says he’s scared, feels like he’s betraying Linda, but he’s also tired of eating frozen dinners alone, tired of talking to his table saw more than he talks to actual people. She smiles, reaches up to brush the scar on his jaw he got when a student’s saw kicked back in 2007, her thumb rubbing the rough skin slow. She says Linda would kick both their asses if they spent the rest of their lives miserable just because they thought they had to.
He leans down, kisses her first on the cheek, soft, testing the water, and she tilts her head so it lands on her mouth. It’s slow, chaste, the faint taste of cherry seltzer on her lips, coconut sunscreen in his nose, crickets chirping in the grass nearby. When he pulls back, they’re both grinning, the first real, unforced smile he’s had in years. He asks her to come by his workshop tomorrow at 2, bring the chest, he even has the same cedar stain Linda picked out for it back in 2004. She says she’ll bring a six pack of his favorite IPA, the one he only buys for special occasions. He tucks a loose silver strand of hair behind her ear before he turns to walk back to his own truck, already measuring the extra cedar planks he has stacked by the workbench to patch the small crack he remembers on the chest’s left side.
