Cliff Harlow, 58, retired high-voltage lineman, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the annual fire department beer garden, the plastic of his cheap lager sticky against the calluses on his palm. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from the 2017 ice storm, when he worked 72 straight hours stringing line so the town’s nursing home didn’t lose power mid-winter, and he’s stubborn enough to still bring that fact up at every town hall where some out-of-touch politician proposes a dumb new rule. His biggest grudge for the past three months has been Mallory Voss, the 49-year-old city councilwoman who moved to town from Boston last year, pushing a plan to bury all overhead power lines that would raise retired folks’ property taxes 12% for a project he swears is unnecessary “performative infrastructure.” He called her proposal unvarnished bullshit at the last public meeting, to the cheers of his buddies and the tight, unamused smile on her face.
The air smells like charred bratwurst, cut grass, and the faint tang of citronella torches keeping mosquitoes away, the country cover band off to the side drawling through a 90s Alan Jackson track. He’s just about to head over to his group of retired lineman friends when she steps up next to him, close enough that their shoulders are three inches apart, and he catches the warm, sweet scent of coconut sunscreen mixed with spearmint gum. She’s wearing high-waisted denim shorts that show off a faint scar on her left knee, a white linen button-down unbuttoned one slot lower than church-appropriate, sun streaks lacing through her auburn hair where it’s pulled back in a loose braid. She holds a cherry hard seltzer in one hand, and when she speaks, her voice is lower than he remembers from the town hall, rough around the edges like she’s been laughing all afternoon. “You’re the guy who called my power line plan bullshit in front of 120 people, right?”
He tenses, jaw tightening, ready to fire back that it is bullshit, but she snorts, shaking her head before he can get the words out. “My dad’s a retired logger up in Tillamook. He calls every new council proposal the exact same thing. Don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally.” She leans in a little when he tells her he spent 32 years climbing poles, her elbow brushing his bicep when she gestures at the scar on his forearm, asking about the storm. He hasn’t talked about that storm to anyone outside his dead wife’s family in years, but he finds himself telling her about the way the ice built up on the lines so thick they snapped like twigs, the way he slept in his truck for three nights because the roads were too bad to get home. When she laughs at his story about the old mayor who tripped over a downed line and landed in a snowbank, her hand lands on his forearm, her thumb brushing the edge of the scar for half a second before she pulls away, and he feels a jolt go straight down his spine, hot and unexpected.
They sit down on the picnic bench a minute later, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts, and he’s torn so sharp it makes his chest ache. Half of him is still bristling, annoyed that he’s even talking to the woman who wants to raise his taxes, half of him can’t stop staring at the freckles across her nose, the way she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear when she’s listening, the way she doesn’t look at him like he’s just some grumpy old widower who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She tells him she moved to town after her divorce, wanted to get away from the chaos of Boston, that her power line plan actually has a federal grant attached that would cover 80% of the cost, she just didn’t get to finish explaining that at the town hall before he and his buddies started yelling. He feels stupid for a second, for not letting her finish, but she waves it off, says she’s used to people yelling at her.
The crowd surges forward when the fire chief starts calling out raffle numbers, some teenager carrying a stack of pizza boxes jostles her from behind, and she stumbles, grabbing his bicep hard to steady herself. Their faces are six inches apart, he can feel her warm breath on his jaw, see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, and for a second he thinks he should pull away, go back to his friends, pretend this never happened. She doesn’t let go of his arm, her thumb brushing the scar again, slow this time, and she says she read the old news story about him and the other linemen working through that storm, that half the town would’ve lost their heat for a week if they hadn’t pulled those shifts. No one’s ever said that to him, not out loud, not like it matters. He doesn’t move when she leans in a little more, her lips brushing his cheek first, soft, then his mouth, slow, like she’s giving him time to pull away if he wants. He hasn’t kissed anyone since his wife Linda died six years prior, and for a second he feels guilty, like he’s breaking some unspoken rule, but the guilt melts faster than the ice in his beer when she smiles at him, soft, no agenda, no argument waiting on her tongue.
They pull apart when the crowd cheers for the grand prize winner, a new side-by-side ATV, and she grins, wiping a smudge of her lip gloss off the corner of his mouth with her thumb. She tugs on the sleeve of his faded flannel, says she owes him a burger at the dive bar off Main Street tomorrow night, no town hall politics allowed, just beer and bad jukebox music, and maybe she’ll even let him rant about the power line plan as long as he buys her an order of onion rings. He nods, doesn’t even make a snarky comment about the tax hike he was complaining about an hour earlier. She waves and walks back over to her group of friends by the bandstand, glancing over her shoulder once to wink at him, and he lifts his beer can to his mouth, the skin of his forearm still tingling where her thumb brushed his scar.
