Ray Voss, 61, has spent 32 years sanding, staining, and sealing hardwood floors across western Ohio, enough that he can tell the age of a white oak plank just by the smell of its sawdust. He’s stubborn to a fault, still sleeps on the same lumpy mattress he bought with his late wife in 1998, still refuses to get a smartphone, still avoids any function where his deadbeat cousin Todd might show up. He only agreed to hit the town’s annual summer street fair because his neighbor begged him to help carry her grandkids’ carnival prizes, and he’d never say no to Mrs. Henderson.
He’s leaning against a splintered fence post at the pop-up beer garden, half-empty can of Pabst cold against his palm, sawdust still caught in the gray stubble along his jaw, the air thick with the smell of fried dough and diesel exhaust from the carnival rides, when he spots her. Maren. Todd’s ex-wife, 57, who left him two years prior after catching him cheating with a waitress from the truck stop off I-75. He’s known her 22 years, watched her raise two kids, helped her fix her kitchen floor when Todd bailed on the job in 2011, always looked away fast when his wife teased him that he stared at her too long at family cookouts. He makes a move to slip out the side of the beer garden before she sees him, but she waves, already heading his way, linen sundress fluttering in the humid July breeze, a plate of fried Oreos in one hand.
His chest feels tight. Half of him is screaming that this is wrong, that Todd’s ex is off-limits, that even thinking about her like that is a betrayal of some unspoken family rule, a betrayal of the wife he buried 8 years prior. The other half of him is buzzing, hot and sharp, like the first time he fired up a sander as a teen, the thrill of something powerful under his hands he could control if he was careful enough. She holds his gaze, no smile now, and says she ran into Mrs. Henderson last week, heard he still turns down every woman who asks him out to the diner on Saturday mornings. He shrugs, looks at his scuffed work boots, says he’s got better things to do. She snorts again, says being lonely isn’t a better thing.
The band shifts to a slow, syrupy cover of “Amazed,” and the crowd of 20-somethings in cutoff shorts thins out, heading for the Ferris wheel at the end of the fairway. She tilts her head, hair falling over one shoulder, the sun hitting the thin streak of gray at her temple, and asks if he wants to dance. He hesitates, his throat dry, thinks about all the times he told himself he’d never date anyone, that he’d already had his one good shot at love, that he hadn’t danced with anyone since his wife’s 40th birthday party in 2004. Then he nods.
He rests his calloused hand on her waist, her hand curls around his shoulder, and they sway off-beat, no one watching them but the old guy tending the beer garden. She leans her head against his chest for a second, says she’s been thinking about him ever since he helped her fix her leaky faucet last winter, that he was the only person who ever treated her like she wasn’t just Todd’s wife. He admits he’s thought about her too, that he was scared to say anything because it felt like crossing a line. She pulls back, looks up at him, her fingers brushing the scar on his knuckle, and says the only line that matters is the one between being happy and being miserable for no good reason.
When the song ends, they don’t let go of each other. They walk down the fairway together, his hand brushing hers every few steps, until he laces their fingers together, his calluses rough against her soft skin. He buys her a cone of pink cotton candy at the stand by the Tilt-A-Whirl, and she gets a clump of it stuck on her cheek, pink and sticky. He wipes it off with his thumb, lets his hand rest on her jaw for a second, and she leans into his touch, smiling. The Ferris wheel bell rings off in the distance, kids screaming as the cars dip, and she leans up, kisses him soft, the sweet taste of sugar and coconut on her lips, warm in the July heat.
