Elias Voss, 52, wipes a streak of aluminum polish off his jaw with the back of a grease-stained flannel sleeve, the July sun beating down hard enough to make the polished sides of his 1957 Airstream Bambi glow like a shard of fallen star. He’s a vintage trailer restorer by trade, works out of a converted barn on 5 acres outside Meridian, only takes three clients a year so he doesn’t have to rush, hasn’t so much as flirted with a woman since his divorce seven years prior. His ex left him for a real estate broker with a waterfront house in Coeur d’Alene, and spent the first year after the split badmouthing him to every single person in their small town social circle, so he’s kept to himself mostly, spends his nights watching old Westerns with his basset hound, Otis, and his days sanding down dents and rewiring 12-volt lighting systems. He only agreed to bring the Bambi to the town’s Fourth of July street fair because the organizer promised him free barbecue for a month.
The air smells like burnt charcoal, cotton candy, and citronella candles, kids screaming as they race past his display with glow sticks wrapped around their wrists. He’s leaning against the trailer’s hitch, sipping a too-sweet lemonade he bought from the 4-H booth, when a woman’s forearm brushes his, soft, the scratch of a crocheted wool wrist warmer catching on the frayed edge of his flannel. He looks down, then up, and it’s Mara Hale, the new librarian who moved to town three months prior, the woman his ex had specifically labeled “off limits” after Mara left her abusive husband and quit their book club without giving a formal goodbye. Elias has only talked to her twice before, both times at the library, when he checked out books on midcentury metalworking, and he’d avoided eye contact both times, too nervous about what his ex might say if someone saw them chatting.
She’s holding a stack of hand-stamped bookmarks, silver streaks threading through her dark curly hair, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Johnny Cash tee that has a hole at the left shoulder, her bare legs dotted with freckles. She laughs, holds up a keychain he laid out for visitors, a tiny plastic replica of a 1950s Airstream. “I’ve been eyeing these all afternoon,” she says, her voice low, a little rough, like she spends all day reading aloud to kids. “I’ve wanted one of these trailers since I was 16, saw one parked at a campground outside Yellowstone.”
Elias finds himself talking before he can think better of it, offering to show her the inside. The trailer door is only 24 inches wide, so they have to squeeze through together, his hip pressing hard against hers, the heat of her thigh seeping through the thin denim of her shorts, his hand brushing the small of her back when he reaches past her to flip on the overhead fairy lights strung along the ceiling. The air inside is cool, scented with cedar and the lemon Pledge he uses to polish the built-in wood cabinets, the noise from the fair muted to a low hum through the thick aluminum walls. He’s half panicking, half giddy, his chest tight with the kind of nervous energy he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking into drive-in movies with his high school girlfriend. He knows if anyone sees them leave the trailer together, the gossip mill will be spinning by sundown, his ex will leave three angry voicemails on his phone before the fireworks even start, and half the church ladies will side-eye him at the grocery store for a month.
He sits on the built-in bench across from the tiny kitchenette, and she sits next to him, close enough that their shoulders touch, leaning in to look at the vintage tube radio he restored last winter. “I noticed you leave peppermints on the checkout desk for the teen volunteers,” she says, turning to look at him, her brown eyes bright, no makeup, a smudge of blue ink on her left cheek. “No one else in this town does little things like that unless they want something in return.”
They hear the first crack of fireworks outside, and he stands, pulls open the rear hatch, the cool evening air drifting in. They sit side by side on the rubber bumper, their feet dangling a few inches off the asphalt, watching bursts of red and blue and gold explode over the ferris wheel at the far end of the fairgrounds. He grabs a cold IPA he stashed in the mini fridge that morning, hands it to her, their fingers brushing when she takes the can, the cold aluminum stinging his skin a little.
He asks her if she wants to take the Bambi up to the Sawtooth Mountains next weekend, drive up to the campground by Redfish Lake, no cell service, no neighbors, no one to bother them. She takes a sip of beer, leans her head on his shoulder, her curly hair tickling his neck.
A burst of crimson firework light paints her cheek pink, and he doesn’t even flinch when he feels her hand curl around his.
