Rudy Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has a non-negotiable 45-minute rule for any public social event. He’s spent 19 years adhering to it, ever since his wife left him for a 28-year-old realtor she met at an open house, and he’d rather sand pressure-treated pine for 12 hours straight than make small talk with people who only ask how he’s doing to get to the gossip about his failed marriage. He’s at the small town’s annual summer beer garden only because he dropped off the 8-foot picnic table he built for the event in exchange for a free IPA and a bag of smoked almonds, and he’s got 12 minutes left on the timer he set in his phone when he walked in.
The air smells like charred bratwurst, citrusy hop fumes from the craft beer taps, and cut grass trampled flat by hundreds of sneakers and cowboy boots. Cornhole boards thud 20 feet away, a group of retired firefighters holler over a bad throw, and a kid runs past him chasing a golden retriever with a half-eaten hot dog in its mouth. He leans against the table he built, running a calloused thumb over the rounded edge he sanded for three hours the night before, sipping his hazy IPA out of a red plastic cup. He’s still wearing his dust-stained Carhartt jacket even though the sun’s high enough to make the back of his neck sweat, his work boots crusted with pine sawdust he didn’t bother brushing off before he left the garage.
He’s just about to check his timer again when a woman sits down on the bench next to him, close enough that her bare arm brushes his when she sets her own cup down on the table. He turns to tell her there’s plenty of empty space elsewhere, and the words die in his throat. It’s Clara, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the one he hasn’t seen since the divorce papers were signed 18 years prior. She’s got the same faint scar slashing across her left cheekbone, the one she got when she crashed her ATV at the family cabin up in the Cascades back in 2001, when Rudy was still married and had a strict rule he wouldn’t let himself look at her for longer than two seconds at a time, scared of the quiet, guilty spark he felt every time she laughed too loud or leaned in to ask him a question about his woodworking projects.
She’s 54 now, silver strands curling through the dark brown hair she’s pulled back in a loose braid, wearing a linen button-down unbuttoned one notch past what most people would call polite, sunspots dotting her forearms from months working travel nurse shifts in Hawaii. She smells like coconut sunscreen and spearmint gum, and when she grins at him, the same gap between her two front teeth he’d stared at too many times at family cookouts, he feels his face heat up like he’s a 16 year old kid caught staring at his teacher’s chest.
“Recognize that scar, huh?” she says, leaning in so her knee presses against his under the table, her voice raised just enough to cut over the noise of the band tuning up on the small stage. “Still wear that same ratty Carhartt, too. I told my sister back then you were too much of a good man to put up with her nonsense, but she never listened.”
Rudy’s throat goes dry. He’d spent 19 years telling himself that the flicker of attraction he’d felt for Clara back then was a moral failure, that he was a bad husband for even noticing her, that any thought of her was off limits, dirty, wrong. He should stand up, leave, drive back to his empty house and sand a table leg until his hands ache, but he can’t make himself move. She reaches across the table to grab a jar of spicy mustard, her forearm brushing his again, and he doesn’t flinch this time.
They talk for 40 minutes without him checking his phone once. She tells him she’s in town for three days, dropping off supplies at the local clinic before she takes a travel assignment in Alaska. She teases him about the fact he still owns that beat up 1998 Ford F-150 he drove to the cabin all those years ago, she asks if he still has the cabin, the one he kept in the divorce. When he nods, she rests her hand on his thigh, light, not pushy, her palm warm through the worn denim of his jeans, and says she always wanted to go back and see if the old rope swing over the creek was still there.
He hesitates for three seconds. He thinks about the gossip that would spread through town if anyone saw them together, about how his ex-wife would call him a sleaze, about how he’s spent almost two decades building a life where he doesn’t have to answer to anyone’s opinions, where he doesn’t let himself want anything that could mess up his quiet routine. The hand on his thigh squeezes a little, and he smells that coconut sunscreen again, and he realizes he’s been tired of quiet for a very long time.
He finishes the last of his beer, warm and bitter on his tongue, and stands up. He holds his hand out to her, and she takes it, her fingers calloused from starting IVs, fitting perfectly in his. They walk past the cornhole boards, past the group of firefighters who wolf whistle and give him a thumbs up, past the kid still chasing that golden retriever, and out to his truck parked at the edge of the lot. He opens the passenger door for her, she slides in, and he hands her the beat up aux cord he keeps tucked in the cup holder.
He gets in the driver’s seat, turns the key, and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” blares from the speakers, the same CD he’s had in the player since 2003. She laughs, turns the volume up, and hums along, her bare foot tapping on the dashboard. He pulls out of the parking lot, turns onto the two-lane highway that leads up to the cabin, the summer wind blowing through the open windows, carrying the smell of pine and wild blackberries. He reaches over, rests his hand on her knee, and doesn’t look back at the town in the rearview mirror.
