Rafe Marquez, 53, made his living reviving dead retro arcade cabinets, a job that let him talk to circuit boards more than people for the eight years since his wife left him for a software sales rep who wore tailored polos and thought Space Invaders was “a boomer meme.” His only consistent social outing was the monthly VFW fish fry in his small western Ohio town, where he could sit in the same splintered corner table, eat overfried cod, and avoid small talk without anyone giving him grief. The grease under his fingernails that day was from a 1982 Donkey Kong unit he’d spent three hours prying a half-dissolved Jolly Rancher out of the control panel, and he’d forgotten to change out of his oil-stained gray flannel before heading over.
All the other tables were full by 7 p.m., so he didn’t protest when a woman dropped a tray across from him, her scuffed white sneakers knocking his boot under the table as she sat. She wore faded denim overalls over a thin white tee, silver hoop earrings that caught the light of the string lights strung above the tables, and there was pale blue paint crusted under the edges of her fingernails. “Sorry,” she said, grinning, when a dollop of tartar sauce plopped onto the knee of her overalls. “New to town, still figuring out how not to make a mess of everything.” She was Elara, the new elementary school art teacher everyone had been chattering about for three months, he realized. He’d seen her at the grocery store once, carrying a case of neon spray paint and a gallon of milk, but hadn’t worked up the nerve to say hello.
They talked first about the fish, then about the terrible old Merle Haggard track blaring on the jukebox, then about his work, when she pointed at the grease streak on his flannel sleeve. He told her about the Donkey Kong unit, about the kid who’d shoved the Jolly Rancher in there during a birthday party at the pizza joint down the street, and she leaned in, elbows on the table, so close he could smell the lavender of her shampoo over the vinegar and fried oil hanging in the air. Her knee brushed his again, and this time she didn’t yank it away, just kept it pressed there, warm through the denim of their jeans, as he rambled about capacitor replacement.
The twist hit when she mentioned her older brother, Jake, the same software sales rep his ex had run off with. Rafe’s jaw tightened, his hand curling around his beer mug so hard his knuckles whitened. He’d spent years hating Jake, hating the whole mess of that divorce, hating that he’d been left alone in a house too big for one person with a garage full of broken arcade games. He almost stood up to leave right then, until she laughed, sharp and bitter, and said Jake was the most self-absorbed asshole she’d ever met, that he’d cheated on Rafe’s ex six months after they moved to Florida, that she’d moved up to Ohio specifically to get as far away from his constant lying and grandstanding as possible.
The tension drained out of his shoulders slow, like water out of a leaky hose. He told her he was the guy Jake had stolen his wife from, and she winced, then laughed again, shaking her head. “Small world,” she said, and when she passed him the ketchup bottle a minute later, her fingers brushed his, soft and warm, and he felt a tingle run up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old, sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his dad’s pickup. She said she had an old 1987 Lite-Brite she’d picked up at a garage sale that wouldn’t turn on, and she’d been asking around if anyone knew how to fix old electronics. He invited her back to his shop before he could overthink it.
His shop smelled like solder and old plastic, the walls lined with half-repaired cabinets glowing soft neon in the low light. He fixed the Lite-Brite in 10 minutes, prying out a corroded battery terminal and soldering a new one in, and when he flipped the switch, it lit up bright, the rainbow of pegs she’d stuffed into it before bringing it over forming a lopsided little sunflower. She turned to him before he could say anything, her hand resting light on his arm, and kissed him, slow, her lip gloss tasting like lemonade and the peppermint candy she’d been sucking on at the fish fry. He didn’t pull away, just tangled one hand in her curly brown hair, the grease on his fingers catching on the ends, and kissed her back.
They stayed up until 1:47 a.m. playing Street Fighter II on a cabinet he’d restored the year prior; she beat him twice fair and square, and he let her win the third time, letting her Chun-Li kick his Ryu off the edge of the stage just to hear her whoop so loud the neighborhood cat ran off the porch outside. When she grabbed her Lite-Brite to leave, she slipped a crumpled note with her phone number into the pocket of his flannel, said she’d baked a peach pie that morning and would drop it off the next afternoon after she finished teaching art class. He stood on the porch watching her taillights fade down the dirt road leading out of town, running a thumb over the smudge of blue paint she’d left on his wrist when she’d hugged him goodbye.
