Moe Rainer is 52, makes his living restoring vintage campers and travel trailers out of a cinder-block barn 10 miles outside of Marion, North Carolina. He’s got a scar slicing across his left eyebrow from a 2019 accident with a rusted awning spring, and his worst flaw is that he’s spent the seven years since his divorce actively dodging any interaction that could lead to something more than a quick wave over a fence. He figures small towns run on gossip, and he’s already been the subject of enough of it after his ex-wife left him for the deacon of their old church, so he keeps his head down, fixes folks’ lawnmowers for free when they can’t pay, and shows up to the general store’s weekly Thursday beer pop-up alone, every single week.
The humidity is thick enough to sip mid-July when she slides onto the bench across from him, the only open spot left at the only picnic table not occupied by a group of high schoolers yelling about their summer lifeguard shifts. Moe tenses immediately. He recognizes her: Lila, the new Methodist pastor who moved to town three months prior, who’d stopped by his shop the week before asking if he could fix the church’s beat-up 1972 VW bus they used for weekend food runs to the low-income hollows up in the mountains. He’d brushed her off then, mumbled something about being booked three months out, ignored the way she’d smiled and said she’d check back.
She’s wearing a linen button-down rolled to the elbows, scuffed hiking boots caked with red clay, and there’s a tiny sunflower tattoo peeking out from the edge of her silver watch band. She smells like lavender and freshly cut hay, and when she sets her seltzer can down on the splintered table, her knuckles brush his, calloused too, from hauling boxes of canned goods, he guesses. He freezes, doesn’t yank his hand away like he normally would when a stranger gets too close. She doesn’t mention the bus at first, just teases him about the grease crusted under his fingernails that he’d spent 10 minutes scrubbing before he left the shop, says she saw him pull over on Route 221 last weekend to carry a baby deer with a broken leg out of the path of an oncoming semi.
Moe blinks. He hadn’t thought anyone saw that. He’d been on his way to pick up a parts order, had wrapped the deer in an old moving blanket from the back of his truck, dropped it off at the wildlife rehab place 20 minutes out of town, hadn’t told a soul. He shifts in his seat, the frayed leg of his work jeans brushing hers under the table, and feels a heat crawl up his neck he hasn’t felt in years. He’s torn, half of him wanting to mumble an excuse, grab his half-empty IPA, and bolt for his truck, the other half wanting to lean in, ask her what else she knows about him. He’d spent seven years writing off anyone associated with the local church, still bitter about the way the whole congregation had taken his ex’s side, acted like he’d been the one who’d broken his marriage vows.
She leans in then, elbows on the table, so close he can see the flecks of gold in her warm brown eyes, and says she knows why he blew her off at the shop. She says she heard the story about his ex, that she’d quit her old church in Charlotte because she got tired of the hypocrisy, of folks who preached about grace but gossiped about their neighbors the second they walked out the door. Her knee presses firmer against his under the table, no accident this time, and she says she’s been asking about him for weeks, that everyone she talks to says he’s the only guy in town who actually follows through on what he says he’ll do, no empty promises, no holier-than-thou speeches.
Moe laughs, rough and surprised, and admits he’d been avoiding her because he thought she’d judge him for skipping church every Sunday, for the string of swear words he yells when he snaps a wrench mid-job, for the stack of empty beer cans on his front porch that he forgets to throw away half the time. He tells her he can start on the VW bus next Monday, won’t charge her a dime if she brings him a homemade peach pie to eat while he works. She grins, wide and unapologetic, and wraps her hand around his, her fingers fitting perfectly between his calloused ones, says she’ll bring two pies, one for the workday, one for dinner at her place after he’s done for the day.
The sun dips below the oak tree line as they talk, the crickets starting to chirp in the tall grass around the table, and Moe doesn’t even notice when the guy running the pop-up starts packing up his coolers. He runs his thumb over the tiny sunflower tattoo on her wrist, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave early.
