Rafe Marquez, 59, makes his living restoring vintage camping gear for collectors across the Pacific Northwest, and he’s spent the last seven years living by a strict set of self-imposed rules. No dating anyone who lives within a 10 mile radius. No accepting dinner invitations from mutual friends of his ex-wife. No flirting, no lingering eye contact, no anything that could make someone call him “the guy who dumped Lori for a younger woman” even though Lori was the one who left him for a competitive cycling coach half his age. He’s got a scar across his left knuckle from prying a rusted 1950s cooler open last winter, and he hates small talk more than he hates cheap modern lanterns that break after three uses.
He’s set up at the Deschutes County harvest fair on a crisp October Saturday, his display of polished Colemans and dented, repainted coolers drawing a steady stream of retirees planning winter camping trips and teens looking for aesthetic decor for their apartments. The air smells like fried oreos, cut alfalfa, and the faint tang of apple cider drifting from the stall two down. He’s halfway through explaining how to adjust the valve on a 1964 lantern to a retired logger when someone leans over the edge of his table, their shoulder brushing his bicep, and he freezes.
He knows that perfume, cherry pie filling and pine hand lotion, the same stuff she wore when she was 16 and showed up to his and Lori’s Fourth of July cookout with a homemade potato salad that was so salty no one could eat it. Marnie. Lori’s first cousin, the one who used to ask him to teach her how to change the oil in her beat up Honda Civic, the one who didn’t text him for six years after the divorce, like she was picking sides. She’s 42 now, sun streaks bleached into her dark brown hair, a flannel tied around her waist, flour smudged on the knee of her jeans, selling homemade jams and pies from a booth stacked high with mason jars. She holds eye contact for three beats longer than she should, grinning, and says he still looks like he’d rather be elbow deep in rust than talking to people.
He’s immediately uncomfortable, his throat tight, every one of his stupid rules blaring in his head. This is the kind of thing he’s spent years avoiding, the kind of connection that would get whispered about at family dinners, that would make Lori call him screaming. He wants to tell her to leave, to go back to her jam stall, but he can’t stop staring at the smattering of freckles across her nose, the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she laughs at a kid who drops a jar of blackberry jam on the dirt a few feet away.
The sky darkens fast, no warning, and the first fat raindrops hit his bare forearm cold enough to make him jump. Everyone at the fair scrambles, vendors yanking tarps over their displays, parents herding screaming kids under awnings. Rafe fumbles with the folded tarp he keeps tucked under his table, his fingers slipping on the wet plastic, and suddenly Marnie is next to him, grabbing the other end of the tarp, her hand brushing his when they both reach for a bungee cord. They both slip on the mud-slicked grass at the same time, landing in a heap next to his stack of coolers, her palm splayed flat against his chest, her face inches from his. He can feel her breath warm against his neck, hear the rain hammering on the awning above them, and she says she never took Lori’s side, that she always thought he was too good for her, that she’s had a crush on him since she was 16 and he fixed her car for free.
The tightness in his throat melts, all that stupid self-imposed guilt he’s carried for seven years fizzling out like a wet match. He’d spent so long punishing himself for a divorce that wasn’t even his fault, so long convinced he didn’t deserve to have fun, that he didn’t even notice how lonely he was. He brushes a wet strand of hair off her face, his thumb brushing her cheek, and he doesn’t care what Lori would say, doesn’t care what the family would whisper.
They get the tarp tied down ten minutes later, the rain letting up to a soft drizzle, the fair closing early because most of the grounds are flooded. Marnie grabs a dented tin of peach cobbler from under her stall counter, still warm, and two plastic forks, and they climb into the back of his beat up Ford F150, the bed lined with an old wool blanket he keeps for camping trips. They pass the cobbler back and forth, watching the sun dip below the pine trees, the sky turning pink and orange, and when she leans her head on his shoulder, he doesn’t pull away. When she licks a smudge of cobbler crust off the corner of his jaw, he doesn’t even pretend to be surprised.
