Rafe Muñoz, 53, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a converted barn on the edge of a tiny eastern Oregon town, and his biggest flaw is that he’s convinced any casual connection outside of work will blow up into the kind of messy small-town drama he left Portland to escape. Seven years out from a divorce that dragged on 18 months and cost him half his tool collection, he sticks to a strict routine: up at 6, weld until 5, stop at the Corner Tap for one beer on Fridays, avoid all small talk with neighbors unless it’s about trailer axles or parts deliveries.
He’s at the town’s annual summer street fair only because his childhood buddy drove three hours to visit, and threatened to post all of Rafe’s 1990s skate park mugshots on Facebook if he didn’t tag along. The air is thick with the smell of grilled sweet corn, citronella candles, and hot asphalt, and the bluegrass band set up by the bounce house is playing a rowdy cover of a Johnny Cash track he hasn’t heard since college. He’s leaning against a fence post sipping a cold IPA, ignoring his buddy’s rambling about his kid’s little league team, when he spots her.
Clara, the woman who moved into the cottage ¼ mile down the road from his barn three months prior, is manning a homemade jam booth a hundred feet away, sun streaking the auburn strands of hair she’s pulled back in a loose braid. She’s wiping a smudge of blackberry jam off her wrist with a crumpled napkin, and she catches him staring before he can look away. She smirks, lifts an eyebrow, and he feels his neck heat up like he’s 16 again getting caught staring at the cheer captain in homeroom. His buddy follows his line of sight, snorts, and shoves a second IPA into his hand. “Quit being a coward. Go buy a jar for your mom. She loves blackberry jam, right?”
Rafe grumbles, but he’s already walking toward the booth, gravel crunching under his scuffed work boots, the calluses on his palms catching on the frayed hem of his well-worn flannel. He’s avoided every chance to talk to Clara since she moved in, ducking behind a trailer frame when she waved at him from her pickup last month, pretending he didn’t hear her yell over the fence to ask if he had an extra socket set two weeks back. He thought if he kept his distance, no one would start spreading stupid rumors about the reclusive trailer guy and the new jam lady.
When he reaches the booth, she leans over the rough-cut wooden counter, and her bare elbow brushes his when she reaches for a jar of the dark, glistening blackberry jam. He can feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of his sleeve, and his breath catches for half a second. “Took you long enough to stop by,” she says, her voice low, rough from too many years of singing in dive bar cover bands, and he can smell lavender soap and ripe berries on her. “I’ve seen you hauling that beat up Airstream down main street at 7 a.m. every Saturday, covered in welding spatter and sawdust. Figured you’d never make time for anything that doesn’t have a hitch.”
He laughs, surprised, and admits he’s been avoiding her because he didn’t want to get wrapped up in the town’s gossip mill. She snorts, wiping a drop of rain off the edge of the booth canopy, and tells him the only gossip about him is that he fixes single moms’ trailers for half price and leaves out dry food for the feral cats behind his shop. Before he can respond, the sky opens up, a sharp summer downpour that hits so fast people are screaming and running for cover before the first drops even hit the asphalt.
The tent over her booth starts leaking immediately, and she grabs an armful of jam jars, swearing when one slips a little. Rafe reaches over, catches it, and helps her haul the whole stack of unopened jars to the back of her beat up Ford Ranger parked 20 feet away. They’re both soaked through by the time they’re done, her white tank top clinging to the freckled skin of her shoulders, strands of wet hair stuck to her neck. She leans back against the truck bed, so close he can feel the heat coming off her even through their wet clothes, and tilts her chin up to look him dead in the eye. “You gonna keep hiding out in that barn forever, Rafe?”
He doesn’t say anything. He just reaches out, brushes a wet strand of hair off her face, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she doesn’t pull away. She tastes like blackberry jam and mint gum when she kisses him, the rain drumming loud on the truck roof, the bluegrass band still playing under their canopy even with the water pouring off the edges.
Ten minutes later, the rain lets up, leaving the air smelling like wet pine and fresh cut grass. She shoves the jar of blackberry jam into his free hand, scribbles her cell number on the lid with a purple Sharpie, and tells him to bring over a six pack of that dark IPA he likes when he’s done with the Airstream he’s restoring. He walks back to where his buddy is waiting, the guy grinning so wide his cheeks look like they hurt, holding up his hand waiting for a high five. Rafe ignores him, twisting the jar of jam slowly in his hand, already mentally rearranging his work schedule to wrap up the Airstream a day early.
