Javi Mendez is 63, a vintage travel trailer restorer based outside Knoxville, Tennessee, and his most persistent flaw is that he’d rather sand a 1962 Airstream frame for 12 straight hours until his knuckles bleed than ask anyone for a hand. He’s lived alone since his wife left eight years prior, filling the quiet with power tools and bluegrass radio, and he’s avoided the new neighbor three doors down since she moved in three months ago for one very specific, very stupid reason: Mara Carter was his ex-wife’s college roommate, and he’d harbored a dumb, quiet crush on her back when he was still a married man, the kind he’d never dared act on, not even in a stray thought that lasted longer than two seconds.
He’s leaning against a weathered oak barrel at the small town fall beer festival when she spots him, holding a hazy pumpkin ale that’s sweeter than he’d like, his left hand throbbing where arthritis has locked up two of his knuckles from the morning’s work. She’s wearing a faded red flannel tied around her waist, work boots caked in mud from the trail she hiked earlier, and she weaves through the crowd of flannel-clad locals and tourist families so fast she almost runs into a guy in a full turkey costume holding a cotton candy stick. She stops so close when she reaches him that their shoulders brush when she leans in to yell over the bluegrass band playing on the makeshift stage, her hair smelling like pine and coconut shampoo.
He tenses up at first, half ready to make an excuse to leave, but then she grins, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, and asks if the ale’s any good. Before he can answer, she’s reaching for the plastic cup in his hand, her cool fingers brushing his sore knuckles, and he flinches before he can stop himself. She pauses, her brow furrowing, and wraps her fingers around his wrist gently, turning his hand over to get a look at the swollen, red knuckles, her thumb brushing the scar across his palm he got when a trailer hitch slipped two years back. “You’ve been working too hard again,” she says, and he blinks, because he didn’t realize she’d been paying enough attention to know he works too hard.
They talk for 45 minutes, leaning against that barrel, her shoulder pressed to his the whole time, because the crowd keeps pressing in closer, and every time she laughs at a dumb joke he makes, she leans in a little more, her arm brushing his bicep. He finds out she does woodworking as a side hustle, makes custom cutting boards and cabinet trim for folks around town, and she admits she’s been standing on her front porch for weeks watching him sand the Airstream in his driveway, because she loves the way he takes his time, even on the tiny, unseen parts of the frame. He almost says no when she asks if she can come by tomorrow to help sand the interior trim, his default response to any offer of help, but then he looks at her, the way the string lights strung across the fairground catch the gold flecks in her brown eyes, and he says yes before he can overthink it.
She shows up at his shop the next afternoon with a six pack of the less sweet IPA he mentioned liking at the festival and a tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies, and they spend three hours sanding the Airstream’s oak trim, their knees brushing every time they pass the sandpaper back and forth, the radio playing old Johnny Cash tracks low in the background. He doesn’t even realize his hands don’t hurt half as bad as usual until they’re sitting on his front porch later, watching the sun dip below the ridge line, the air smelling like sawdust and the leftover apple cider he heated up on the stove. She leans in to brush a fleck of sawdust off his cheek, her thumb lingering on his jaw for two full beats, and he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t make a dumb joke to lighten the mood, just sits there, his heart beating faster than it has in a decade.
He admits he’d avoided her for months because he thought she’d still see him as the boring, uptight guy she knew 20 years ago, that he felt guilty for even thinking about her when he was still married, that he was scared she’d judge him for how his marriage fell apart. She laughs, soft, and leans in a little closer, her knee pressing to his, and tells him she always thought he was too good for his ex, that she’d had a crush on him back in college too, that moving three doors down from him was the best accident she’d ever had. She laces her fingers through his, careful not to squeeze too hard on his sore knuckles, and he lets her, no urge to pull away, no urge to make a plan for what comes next. A cricket chorus starts up in the oak tree at the edge of his yard, and the string lights strung across his porch flicker when a soft breeze blows through, carrying the faint smell of wood smoke from a neighbor’s fire pit. He brings their laced hands up to his mouth, presses a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles, and smiles when she shivers a little, even though the air’s still warm enough for short sleeves.
