Rafe Marquez, 52, makes his living stripping rust off 1960s travel trailers and fitting them with reclaimed cedar countertops and hand-carved cabinet pulls. He’s lived in the tiny mountain town of Black Hawk for 11 months, and has made exactly zero friends outside of the 72-year-old guy who runs the hardware store and a handful of repeat trailer restoration clients. His biggest flaw? He’s spent the three years since his wife left him for a 28-year-old ski instructor deliberately avoiding any interaction that could lead to even the mildest emotional vulnerability. He keeps a stack of fake work emergency texts saved in his phone to pull out when he gets stuck in small talk at the grocery store or post office, and he’d almost bailed on the Fourth of July street fair three times before he forced himself to show up, only because a client had entered the custom bluebird house Rafe built for her grandkid in the town craft contest.
He’s leaning against a gnarled oak at the edge of the fairgrounds, holding a lukewarm Coors and counting the minutes until the contest winners are announced, when he spots her. Clara Hale. The whole town’s been talking about her for two weeks, ever since her husband, the town councilman, got arrested for embezzling $80,000 from the public park fund. Everyone’s treating her like she helped him hide the cash, even though the local paper already reported she had no idea what he was doing, had filed for separation three days before he was taken in. She’s standing alone by the pie contest table, wearing a faded pale blue linen dress that hits her mid-calf, bare legs dusted with a little dirt from the fairground grass, a smudge of bright cherry pie filling on her left wrist. She drops her paper plate, the half-eaten slice of peach pie sliding onto the dirt at her feet, and Rafe’s moving before he thinks about it, bending to grab the plate before a dog can snatch it.
Their hands brush when they both reach for the edge of the plate. He feels the rough callus on her index finger, the one she gets from brushing out matted fur on the shelter dogs she volunteers with twice a week, he’d heard that from the hardware store guy. She holds eye contact for three full seconds longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smile, like she’s amused he bothered to stop when everyone else has been walking right past her all day. The air between them smells like fried Oreos and charcoal from the grill set up by the fire station, and the county cover band is blaring Folsom Prison Blues so loud he has to lean in to hear her when she says thanks.
He shrugs, says it’s no big deal, nods at the cherry filling on her wrist. “Looks like you had a more successful run at the pie table than I did. All they had left when I got over there was rhubarb, and I hate rhubarb.”
She laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the noise of the crowd, and wipes the filling off with a napkin, her eyes not leaving his. “I saved a slice of cherry in my cooler, if you want it. I brought three, figured I’d be here alone, might as well stock up.”
He should make an excuse. He should pull out his phone, fake a text about a trailer water leak he has to go fix, wish her a happy Fourth and bolt. But the group of three women standing 10 feet away are staring at them, whispering behind their hands, and a sharp, petty anger sparks in his chest, disgust at how quick everyone is to write her off for something she didn’t do. He finds himself saying he’d love that slice of cherry pie.
They stand by the oak tree eating the pie, and she tells him she’s planning to open a mobile dog grooming business out of an old cargo van as soon as the divorce is final, that she’s been looking at vans for sale online but doesn’t know enough about engines to tell if the ones she’s seen are junk. He tells her he knows engines inside and out, that he’ll look at any van she finds for free, no strings attached. When a group of kids dart past, running toward the field where the fireworks are going to start, she stumbles into him, her palm pressing flat against his forearm to steady herself, her skin warm through the thin flannel shirt he’s wearing. She doesn’t move her hand right away, and he doesn’t shake her off.
The first firework goes off with a loud, sharp pop, painting the sky red, and the crowd surges toward the field, pushing them closer together. Her shoulder presses into his bicep, and she tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes glowing with the gold and blue flashes from the fireworks, and she says she’s seen him at the hardware store a dozen times over the last six months, that she almost said hi to him once when he was carrying a stack of cedar planks, but she got nervous he’d brush her off like everyone else in town does. He admits he noticed her too, that he’d even asked the hardware store guy what her name was, but he’d been too much of a coward to say anything, scared of getting burned again.
When the fireworks end, the crowd starts dispersing, and he doesn’t even hesitate before he asks her if she wants to come back to his shop, see the 1965 Airstream he’s restoring for a couple from Austin, that he’s got a cooler of cold beer in the shop fridge if she’s not in a hurry to get home. She nods, a small, bright smile on her face, and links her pinky through his as they start walking down the dirt road away from the fairgrounds. A stray golden retriever trots up to them, tail wagging, and she stops to scratch it behind the ears, her hand still tangled with his.
