Rafe Marquez, 52, has restored 47 vintage campers in the eight years since his ex-wife packed a suitcase and left him for a realtor who never came home covered in sawdust and welding fumes. He doesn’t rent his builds to strangers, doesn’t let anyone inside his workshop unless they’ve known him at least a decade, and has turned down the new county librarian three separate times when she showed up at his fence line asking to reserve a 1968 Scotty for a fall road trip. He’d written her off as another city transplant who thought camping meant glamping, who’d scratch the custom walnut cabinets and clog the holding tank with fancy face wipes. The only reason he’s at the town harvest festival now is because his childhood buddy begged him to drop off the fully restored 1972 Airstream they’re raffling off for the local fire department, and Rafe never says no to the guys who bailed him out of jail after that senior year bonfire gone wrong.
He’s hammering a wooden raffle sign into the mud when he turns too fast, slamming right into a warm, soft body carrying a stack of children’s picture books. Half the stack goes flying. Rafe grabs for the ones closest to the puddle, his calloused palm brushing the curve of her hip through her thick wool skirt when he reaches past her to catch a copy of *Where the Wild Things Are* before it lands in the muck. He mumbles an apology, already bracing for the annoyed huff he expects, but she laughs instead, bright and loud enough to cut through the noise of the funnel cake booth a few yards away. It’s the librarian. He can smell lavender and lemon polish in her hair, her cashmere sweater soft against his work-roughened forearm when they both bend to grab the rest of the books scattered at their feet. She’s got a smudge of blue crayon on her left cheek, and her brown eyes have little flecks of gold in them he never noticed when she was standing on the other side of his workshop fence.
A cold rain hits out of nowhere, fat drops soaking through his flannel in ten seconds flat. They dash under the nearest pop-up awning, the one set up for the 4H pie contest, and huddle close, shoulders pressed tight together, because the awning only covers a three-foot patch of ground. Rafe’s work boots are caked in mud and leftover sealant, hers are polished leather ankle boots with little buckles on the side, and he shifts his weight a little to make sure he doesn’t drip mud on them. She teases him about avoiding her, says she started parking her beat-up Subaru down the street from his shop so he wouldn’t see her coming and pretend he wasn’t home. Rafe shrugs, says he doesn’t rent to people who can’t tell a gray water tank from a freshwater line. She pulls a folded piece of paper out of her tote bag, crinkled at the edges, and shoves it at him. It’s a twelve-point checklist of camper maintenance, notes scrawled in the margins, and she says she took a small engine repair class at the community center last month, watched every one of his YouTube walkthroughs twice, knows exactly what not to flush down the toilet. She says she just wants to drive up to Gifford Pinchot National Forest for a week, watch the maple trees turn red and gold, no friends complaining about no Wi-Fi, no coworkers texting her about overdue books.
Rafe fights the tight pull in his chest, tells himself she’s fourteen years younger than him, that the town gossips will have a field day if they see them together, that he’s too set in his ways to share a campsite with anyone. But she’s leaning in a little, eyes locked on his, no awkwardness, no hesitation, and she says she noticed the little horse stamp he presses into the inside of every cabinet door, because her uncle owns one of the first campers he ever built, a beat-up 1962 Shasta he fixed up for his sister after she got divorced. No one ever notices that stamp but his oldest clients. He can hear the bluegrass band that’s supposed to play the main stage tuning their fiddles off in the distance, the smell of fried Oreos drifting under the awning, the rain tapping soft and steady on the canvas over their heads.
She asks him again, this time not for a rental, but for him to come along. Says she’ll pay him double his usual rate, he can bring his own hammock, do whatever he wants during the day, she just doesn’t want to get stuck on a dirt road with a flat tire alone, no cell service. Rafe stares at her for a long second, the rain slowing to a drizzle, sun peeking through the clouds, painting little rainbows on the puddles at their feet. He says yeah, okay, he’s got that week free, no builds scheduled.
She grins, pulls a tattered, dog-eared copy of *The Dharma Bums* out of her tote, and tucks it into the front pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing the raised scar on his chest he got from a welding burn three years back. She says she’ll be at his shop at 7 a.m. Friday, brings her own coffee, oat milk, no sugar, just how she saw him order it at the diner last month. She turns to walk away, her rain boots splashing in the puddles, the hem of her wool skirt dotted with raindrops. Rafe pulls the book out of his pocket, runs his thumb over the worn cover, can still feel the ghost of her fingers against his skin.
