Elias Voss, 57, has restored 127 vintage motorcycles in the eight years since his wife walked out, and he’d take a rusted 1968 Triumph engine apart with a flathead screwdriver over attending the town’s annual summer block party any day. His neighbor, a retired high school football coach with a soft spot for forcing lonely guys out of their garages, had practically dragged him over an hour prior, shoving a can of Pabst in his hand and disappearing into the crowd before Elias could protest. He’s been hovering by the metal cooler full of ice and seltzer ever since, scuffing the toe of his grease-stained work boot into the patchy front lawn, counting down the minutes until he can slip back to his shop and get back to the 1972 CB750 he’s been tinkering with for three months.
The air smells like charcoal, smoked bratwurst, and cut grass, thick with the kind of midwestern humidity that makes the back of his neck sticky ten minutes after he steps outside. He’s just reached for a second beer when another hand bumps his, small, warm, a faint callus on the index finger that scrapes against his knuckle. He looks up, and his throat goes dry. It’s Maeve Carter, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who used to visit for Thanksgiving back when they were married, the one who’d sit on his workshop floor for an hour asking questions about his projects while the rest of the family bickered about politics in the dining room. She moved to town three months prior to take a part-time job at the public library, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid her ever since, figuring any connection to his ex was not worth the trouble.
She grins, tucking a strand of auburn hair streaked with silver behind her ear, and grabs a cherry seltzer from the cooler. Her linen shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, freckles dusting the top of her chest, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the lemon hard candy she always used to suck on back when they knew each other before. “Elias. I was wondering if I’d run into you here. I stopped by your shop twice last week, but the door was locked.” Her voice is still the same, low, a little rough around the edges from years of smoking menthols she swears she quit three years ago. He’s suddenly hyper aware of the grease under his fingernails, the faded Harley Davidson shirt he threw on that morning that has a hole at the elbow. He mumbles a hello, shifting his weight, half wanting to make an excuse and leave, half wanting to stay and hear what she has to say.
A group of teens carrying water guns runs past, and she stumbles forward, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep for a full three seconds before she catches herself. She doesn’t step back far, either, staying close enough that he can feel the heat coming off her skin, can see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes when she looks up at him. He tells her he was working on a rush job for a guy from Grand Rapids last week, didn’t hear the door, and she laughs, the sound cutting through the noise of the party around them. She asks about the CB750, remembers he was picking up parts for it the last time they talked, eight years ago, the day before his ex told him she was leaving. He’s surprised she remembers, and he finds himself talking longer than he intended, telling her about the mouse nest he found in the gas tank, the way he had to rewire the entire electrical system from scratch. She leans in when he talks, nodding, her elbow brushing his every time she gestures, and he forgets all about wanting to leave.
The conflict nags at the back of his head the whole time, though—she’s his ex’s family, for Christ’s sake, he’d always thought of her as off limits, even when he was miserable in his marriage, even when he’d catch her looking at him across the dinner table at Thanksgiving and feel a spark he knew he shouldn’t. He tells himself he’s being an idiot, that his ex left him, that she hasn’t talked to Maeve in four years anyway, not since they fought over their mom’s inheritance. But the guilt is still there, tangled up with the warm buzz in his chest, the way his hands are sweating like he’s 17 again asking a girl to homecoming.
When she asks if he wants to walk down to the lake to get away from the noise, he hesitates for half a second, then nods. They walk down the wooden boardwalk that cuts through the dunes, the sand still warm from the sun seeping through the holes in his work boots, the sound of the party fading behind them, replaced by the crash of waves and the low chirp of crickets in the grass. The sun is dipping low over the water, painting the sky streaks of pink and tangerine, and she stops at the end of the boardwalk, leaning against the weathered wooden rail, turning to face him.
She tells him she didn’t move here for the librarian job. She tells him she’d had a crush on him since she was 20, since the first time she came to visit her cousin and saw him covered in grease, working on a motorcycle in the driveway. She says she never said anything because he was married, because it felt wrong, but when she heard he was single, when she saw the job opening at the library, she packed up her apartment in Chicago and drove across the state that same weekend. He’s too shocked to speak for a minute, the guilt he’d been holding onto melting away fast, replaced by a giddy lightness he hasn’t felt in decades. He reaches out, brushes a strand of hair that fell in her face, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second.
He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t waste time worrying about what his ex would say, what the town would gossip about. He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop to see the CB750, says he even has that honey lavender tea she used to like stashed in the mini fridge by his workbench. She smiles, wide and bright, and says she’d love that. He wraps his grease-stained, calloused hand around hers, and they turn back toward his house, the distant sound of the block party fading further behind them with every step.
