Clay Bennett, 58, retired backcountry park ranger, had lasted exactly 37 minutes at the neighborhood craft beer festival before he started plotting his escape. He’d moved to Tampa six months prior, after his wife of 32 years lost her two-year fight with ovarian cancer, and every forced community gathering felt like a cheap attempt to glue his broken routine back together for the benefit of nosy neighbors. His only flaw, as far as he was concerned, was a total refusal to play nice with people who didn’t earn it—case in point, his next-door neighbor Todd, the HOA president who’d left a three-page typed letter in Clay’s mailbox two weeks prior demanding he take down the 10-point buck mount hanging on his front porch—the first buck he’d ever shot with his dad when he was 12—calling it “a public nuisance incompatible with neighborhood values.”
He was leaning against the gnarled trunk of a live oak, sipping a hazy IPA cold enough to make his teeth ache, when he spotted Lena, Todd’s wife, picking her way through the crowd with a cherry seltzer in one hand and a crumpled napkin in the other. He’d only spoken to her twice before, once when she brought over a plate of chocolate chip cookies the day he moved in, once when she apologized for Todd yelling at him over the deer mount from their front lawn. He’d avoided her since, partly out of spite for her husband, partly because every time he looked at her he got stuck on the smattering of freckles across her nose and the way her jeans fit just right at the hips, and that felt like a line he had no business toeing.
“Todd’s an idiot,” she yelled over the music, and he laughed, loud and unexpected. She explained she’d grown up hunting whitetail with her dad outside Duluth, thought the buck mount was the best thing on the entire street, had even yelled at Todd for 20 minutes after he dropped the letter off. She gestured to the empty spot next to him on the exposed tree root, and he nodded, and she sat down, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted to get comfortable.
He didn’t even notice his fishing buddy bailed an hour later, too busy telling her about the time a black bear stole his lunch off the hood of his truck in Grand Teton National Park, how he’d chased it for half a mile before he realized he was holding a folding chair like a weapon and the bear was already halfway up a pine tree with his pastrami sandwich. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and her hand landed on his forearm, her chipped dark red nail polish catching the fairy lights strung above the tent, and she left it there for three full seconds before she pulled it back like she’d just touched a hot stove.
The conflict sat hot in his chest the entire time they talked, half sharp disgust at the idea of messing around with his neighbor’s wife, half desire so sharp it made his hands shake a little when he took a sip of his beer. He told himself he should leave, that the last thing he needed was HOA drama on top of everything else, that he was 16 years older than her and had no business wanting anything to do with a married woman, but every time she leaned in to ask another question about his time on the trails, every time her eyes flicked down to his mouth before she looked back up, he couldn’t make himself stand up.
The sun dipped below the rooflines around 8, the air cooling just enough to make the hair on his arms stand up, and she leaned in even closer, her mouth almost touching his ear, so she didn’t have to yell over the cheering crowd. “Todd left this morning for a golf trip in Orlando,” she said, her voice low and warm against his skin. “Won’t be back till Sunday evening. I’ve got my dad’s old hunting knife collection in the guest room, if you want to come look at it. I’ve been trying to date some of them, I can’t tell if the one with the antler handle is from the 70s or the 90s.”
He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the typed HOA letter crumpled in his junk drawer, about the picture of his wife still sitting on his kitchen counter, about the gossip that would spread if anyone saw them walking down the street together. Then he nodded, and stood up, and held out his hand to help her up. Her palm was soft and warm when it slid into his, calloused a little at the fingertips from holding paintbrushes, she’d told him earlier she did freelance watercolor pet portraits on the side.
They walked the two blocks to their houses slow, no one else on the street, the crickets chirping loud in the azalea bushes lining the sidewalk. They stopped between their two driveways, and she tilted her head up to look at him, her eyes dark in the golden porch light from the house across the street. He leaned down and kissed her, soft at first, then a little deeper when she curled her hand into the front of his jacket, her lips tasting like cherry seltzer and vanilla. She pulled back after a minute, grinning, and slipped a crumpled slip of paper with her phone number scrawled on it into the breast pocket of his Carhartt.
He stood in his driveway watching her walk up her front steps, the paper warm through the thick fabric of his jacket, until she unlocked her door and looked back over her shoulder and winked before she stepped inside. He waited another minute, then fished his keys out of his jeans pocket, already mentally making a note to grab the 1987 buck knife he had in his gun safe to bring over when he texted her in 10 minutes.
