Rafe Marquez, 58, retired air traffic controller, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at his Boise neighborhood’s late August block party, condensation from his hazy IPA dripping onto the scuffed leather work boots he’d worn straight from his garage. He’d spent the afternoon prying a rusted carburetor off a 1972 Triumph Bonneville, still has a faint smudge of grease high on his left cheek, and he’d planned to duck out after 20 minutes max, go home, eat frozen pizza, watch an old western. He’d avoided all the previous neighborhood events since moving three months prior, hated the way strangers kept asking if he was settling in okay, if he needed anything, the unspoken pity in their voices when he mentioned he was a widower of seven years. But his garbage can had rolled into Clara’s yard that morning, she’d waved him over when she saw him chasing it, told him he better show up, her brother was smoking brisket, it’d be a crime to miss it. He’d said yes before he thought better of it.
Clara, 54, his next door neighbor who runs a mobile pet grooming service out of a white van covered in hand-painted dog paw prints, saunters over 10 minutes later holding a paper plate stacked high with meat, potato salad, a pickled okra on the side. She’s wearing faded cutoff jeans, a red flannel tied around her waist, a white tank top dotted with a few dog hairs, and when she holds the plate out to him, her bare arm brushes his bicep, warm from the sun. He catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and the cedar smoke from the fire pit behind her, and he has to blink hard to stop himself from staring at the tiny silver hoop through her left nostril, the little crinkle at the corner of her eyes when she smirks and says she saw him checking out her van last week, figured he’d rather talk old bikes than neighborhood HOA drama. He’d spent 32 years talking down panicking pilots in zero-visibility fog, but for half a second he can’t think of a single thing to say.
They sit on the weathered bench next to the picnic table, and when she shifts to get comfortable, her knee presses against his, firm, warm, and she doesn’t pull away. He makes small talk first, mentions he saw her chasing a golden retriever down the block the day before, the dog had one of her pink grooming slippers in its mouth. She laughs, a low, rough sound, and leans in when she talks, close enough that he can see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, says that dog’s a regular menace, but she’d never drop him as a client, his owner brings her homemade peach pie every other week. He finds himself telling her about the Triumph he’s rebuilding, about how his wife Linda had bought it for him for their 25th anniversary, a year before she had the sudden heart attack that killed her at 51. He expects that soft, pitying look he gets from everyone else, but she just nods, taps her beer bottle against his, says she lost her younger sister to a heart attack five years prior, knows how heavy that guilt feels, like you’re not allowed to be happy anymore, like you’re stealing something from the person who’s gone.
The party winds down as the sun dips below the oak trees, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and soft lavender, the kids’ bounce house gets deflated, the fire pit dies down to glowing embers. She asks him if he wants to come look at the 1978 Honda CB her dad left her when he died, it’s been sitting in her shed for three years, she can’t get it to turn over. His first instinct is to say no, to go home to his quiet house, his frozen pizza, the safe, predictable life he’d built for himself where he never had to risk feeling anything sharp or new. But then she tilts her head at him, her hair falling over one shoulder, and he nods before he can overthink it.
The shed is cool, smells like motor oil and lavender sachets she keeps in there to keep mice away, and when she hands him a flathead wrench to check the spark plugs, their hands brush against each other, calloused from his wrenches, her dog clippers, and neither of them pulls away. She admits she’d been asking around about him, heard he worked on bikes, had been trying to work up the nerve to ask him for help for weeks, thought he hated her, the way he always waved fast and ducked back inside whenever he saw her outside. He tells her he was scared, scared of feeling something that didn’t revolve around missing Linda, scared he’d mess up the quiet routine he’d clung to for so long, scared he didn’t deserve to feel light again. She lifts her hand, brushes the smudge of grease off his cheek with her thumb, her palm warm against his skin, says no one’s asking him to forget anyone, just to let himself have a little fun every now and then.
He leans in, kisses her slow, the sound of crickets chirping in the grass outside the shed faint through the open door, the taste of her cherry hard seltzer still on her lips. When he pulls back, she’s grinning, the silver hoop in her nose glinting in the dim light from the bare bulb hanging from the shed ceiling. He taps the wrench he’s still holding against the Honda’s gas tank, tells her he’ll be over at 10 the next morning, brings glazed donuts, his favorite, and if the spark plugs are the only issue, they could take it for a ride out to the foothills by lunch. She nods, leans against the workbench next to him, says she’ll have coffee ready, extra cream and two sugars, just how she saw him take it when he was dragging his trash can to the curb last Tuesday.
