He shifted his weight to take pressure off his bad right shoulder, the one he’d wrecked when a transformer blew on a winter job three years prior, and a woman in a faded yellow sundress stumbled back into him, her elbow catching the sore spot dead on. He grunted, and she spun around fast, her hand flying to his shoulder to steady him, palm warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt, a smudge of dark potting soil caked on her ring finger. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she said, holding his gaze, hazel eyes flecked with green, no hint of the performative apology most folks in this small town tossed out to be polite. She smelled like lavender hand salve and citrus sunscreen, the same kind his grandma used to slather on him before fishing trips when he was a kid.
He laughed it off, told her the shoulder had taken worse hits from falling tree limbs, and she introduced herself as Maeve, the woman who ran the native plant nursery three blocks over. He’d seen her around before, hauling flats of coneflowers in the back of her beat-up pickup, but he’d never talked to her, never even learned her name. They stood there talking for 40 minutes, the crowd ebbing and flowing around them, her shoulder brushing his every time a group of kids darted past chasing a food truck’s ice cream vendor, and she never stepped back to create the polite half-foot of space most strangers stuck to. She told him she’d left her alcoholic ex-husband two years prior, moved across the state to get away from his family’s gossip, and he found himself telling her about the 1972 John Deere 4020 he was restoring in his garage, a project he’d spent 18 months tracking down original parts for, a stack of vintage farm equipment catalogs stacked on his kitchen table that he flipped through every night before bed, a thing he’d never mentioned to anyone but his old work buddy.
The conflict hit when she laughed at a dumb joke he made about his ex-wife burning the turkey every Thanksgiving, and she said, “Yeah, I remember that. She tried to serve it to our family reunion in ‘17, said you’d left the oven on too low to mess with her.” Cole went cold, every muscle in his shoulder tightening up. He’d sworn, the day the divorce papers were signed, that he’d never so much as buy a cup of coffee for anyone related to that woman. He’d turned down three different dates over the years just because they’d gone to high school with her. Disgust curled tight in his chest first, the old anger flaring, then it warred with the sharp, warm hum of desire he’d been ignoring since she’d first put her hand on his shoulder. He knew he should walk away, should mumble an excuse and head home to his quiet empty house, but he couldn’t look away from the way her sundress stuck to the curve of her hip when she shifted her weight, the way she was watching him like she already knew what he was thinking.
“I haven’t spoken to her in eight years, for what it’s worth,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it over the roar of the crowd. “I told her she was an idiot for cheating on you with that guy from the car dealership. She never spoke to me again.”
The band cut out for their set break, fireflies blinking to life above the grassy median between the street and the sidewalk, and she tilted her head toward the tree line at the end of the block, where a small creek cut through the edge of the neighborhood park. “Wanna go cool off? The water stays cold even in this heat.” He hesitated for half a second, then nodded, the stupid 12-year rule dissolving like sugar in iced tea.
They walked the two blocks in comfortable silence, the noise of the party fading behind them, replaced by the chirp of crickets and the soft gurgle of the creek over smooth river rocks. She sat down on a flat, sun-warmed slab of limestone at the water’s edge, kicked off her canvas sneakers, and dipped her bare feet in, sighing when the cold water hit her ankles. He sat down next to her, their knees knocking together when he shifted to pull his boots off, and she didn’t pull away. She reached over without warning, brushing a fleck of beer foam off his lower lip with her thumb, the calloused tip of it lingering on the rough gray stubble of his jaw for a beat longer than necessary.
He leaned in before he could overthink it, kissing her soft, tasting the peach hard seltzer she’d been sipping all night, and she tangled one hand in the gray hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. A group of teens on ATVs yelled as they tore down the dirt path above the creek, and they pulled apart, grinning like they’d just snuck out of a high school dance. She wiped a smudge of her lip gloss off his chin with the back of her hand, then stood, holding her hand out to him. “I got a replacement carburetor for a 4020 in my garage. Picked it up at a farm auction last month, didn’t know what I’d use it for. Wanna come see if it fits yours?”
He took her hand, her palm rough and calloused from hauling potted plants, fitting perfectly against his own, scarred and roughened from 30 years climbing power poles, and stood to follow her up the path.
