Moe Pritchard, 52, vintage snowmobile restorer based out of a cinder block shop 10 miles outside Traverse City, Michigan, hadn’t set foot at a local community event in 16 years. His only persistent flaw, if you asked his childhood buddy Jax who ran the fire department, was that he held grudges so long they’d fossilize. The grudge in question dated back to 2007, when his ex-wife’s cousin Clara Mae Carter spread a rumor he’d cheated on his wife with a parts supplier rep, a lie that split their marriage apart before they’d even hit their third anniversary. He’d blocked every member of his ex’s family on every platform, avoided the grocery store on the west side of town where Clara shopped, even skipped Jax’s annual chili cook-off three years running when he found out Clara volunteered to run the dessert table for the animal rescue she operated.
Jax had begged him this year, said turnout was down, they needed extra cash for new turnout gear, and Moe caved, figuring he could grab a bowl of chili, drop a $200 check in the donation box, and bolt before anyone noticed him. He was halfway through his second bowl of three-alarm, cornbread crumbs sticking to the stubble on his chin, when the sky opened up. Cold October rain hammered down, hard enough to sting exposed skin, and the crowd of 80 or so attendees surged under the single canvas tent strung up between two pine trees.
He stumbled back, his boot catching on a tent stake, and a solid, warm weight slammed into his side. He looked down first, at a pair of scuffed work boots caked in cow manure and dog hair, then up, and his jaw went tight. It was Clara. Her auburn hair was streaked with silver at the roots, stuck to her forehead in wet strands, and she was wearing a faded flannel with the local animal rescue logo stitched on the breast, sleeves rolled up to show forearms crisscrossed with faint scratch marks from spooked cats. She smelled like pine floor cleaner and cinnamon gum, the same scent he’d remembered from 17 years prior, when she’d snuck him a cold PBR behind the garage at his ex’s family Fourth of July cookout.
“Sorry,” she said, stepping back half an inch, but there was nowhere to go, the crowd pressed so tight their shoulders were still flush, her hip brushing his every time someone shifted behind her. Her hazel eyes darted to his face, then away, then back, and he saw pink rise on her cheekbones. “Moe. I didn’t think you’d ever show up to one of these.”
He grunted, shifting his weight so he was facing away from her, but he could still feel the heat coming off her skin, hear her breath catch a little when someone jostled her from behind and her elbow knocked his half-eaten cornbread off his plate onto the wet grass. “Dammit,” he muttered, and she immediately fumbled in her jeans pocket for a crumpled paper napkin, pressing it into his hand. Her fingers brushed his, calloused from hauling dog crates and stacking hay bales for the rescue’s small herd of rescue goats, warmer than he expected.
“I’ve been trying to find you for three years,” she said, raising her voice a little over the rain drumming on the tent roof, Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* blaring from a portable speaker a few feet away. “I told Linda the truth. The whole thing. I made it up.”
Moe froze. He’d spent 16 years hating her, replaying that fight with his ex in his head a hundred times, the way she’d screamed the rumor at him like it was fact, like she never even wanted to believe him. “Why?” he said, his voice rougher than he meant it to be.
She bit her lower lip, and he couldn’t help but track the movement, the way the pink of her lip stood out against her sun-kissed skin. “I was 29. Stupid. I’d had a crush on you for two years, and you married my cousin instead of even asking me out. I was mad. Spit the lie out before I even thought about it. I’ve felt like garbage every single day since.” She gestured to the napkin in his hand, where a smudge of chili had soaked through the paper onto his knuckle. “I get it if you want to tell me to go to hell. I’d deserve it. But I figured if I ran into you, I had to ask. If you’d let me buy you coffee sometime. To make it up to you. Or, uh, whatever you want.”
The anger was still there, hot and tight in his chest, but there was something else too, a flutter in his stomach he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager, the kind of nervous thrill that made his hands sweat a little. He looked at her, the way her wet hair was dripping down her neck, the smudge of chocolate on her chin from the brownies she’d been serving, the way she was looking at him like she half expected him to shove her away. He wiped the chocolate off her chin with the edge of the napkin, and she didn’t pull away, her eyes going wide for half a second before she softened.
“Coffee’s fine,” he said, nodding toward the tent exit where the rain was slowing to a drizzle. “But I got a cooler of IPA in my truck. And a 1974 Ski-Doo Elan I just finished restoring back at my shop. Thought I’d take it out for a test run tomorrow if the lake ice holds. You could come. If you want.”
She laughed, a loud, throaty sound he remembered from those old cookouts, and she leaned in a little, their faces so close he could taste the cinnamon on her breath when she spoke. “Ski-Doo ride and beer sounds way better than coffee.” She laced her calloused fingers through his, tugging him through the thinning crowd toward the parking lot, her shoulder bumping his with every step.
