Roy Pacheco, 53, made his living restoring vintage motorcycles out of a converted barn 10 miles outside Marshall, North Carolina, and hadn’t willingly attended a social function that didn’t involve engine parts or beer in eight years. His ex-wife had cheated on him with his business partner back in Charlotte, he’d walked away with half the savings and a 1987 Ford F-150 with rust eating through the wheel wells, and he’d built a quiet life where the only drama he dealt with was a client complaining he’d taken three extra weeks to source an original 1970s Kawasaki gas tank. His biggest flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him, was that he’d built his walls so high he couldn’t even see over them to talk to a woman who wasn’t dropping off a bike for repair.
He’d gotten dragged to the VFW fish fry by his neighbor, a retired line cook who’d owed Roy a favor after he’d fixed his riding lawnmower for free in the middle of summer, and he’d been leaning against the bed of his truck for 45 minutes, picking at a paper plate of catfish and hushpuppies, when she walked over. He knew who she was: Mara Hale, the new librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, who’d quit a six-figure corporate law job in Charlotte, who the whole town whispered about because she’d left her husband for a sitting superior court judge, who’d gotten run out of the city when the story hit the local news.
She stopped so close to him the shoulder of her flannel brushed his bicep, and he could smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the grease he still hadn’t scrubbed out from under his nails and the sharp, salty scent of fried fish drifting from the fryers under the pavilion. She was wearing a faded Johnny Cash tee tucked into high-waisted jeans, scuffed black combat boots, and there was smudged blue ink on her left wrist, like she’d been stamping library books all afternoon. She held eye contact with him longer than most people did, hazel eyes flecked with green, no awkward look away, no polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Heard you’re charging the mayor $12,000 to restore that CB750 he found in his uncle’s barn,” she said, nodding at the sticker for his shop on the back window of his truck. “Good for you. The man’s got more money than sense, and he’s gonna make you paint it neon orange, isn’t he?”
Roy huffed a laugh, surprised. He’d only told two people about the neon orange demand. “How’d you hear that?”
“Dropped off flyers for the local history exhibit at your shop last week. Saw the paint swatch taped to your workbench.” She reached over, plucked a hushpuppy off his plate, and her knuckles brushed his when she pulled her hand back, a sharp, warm jolt that ran up his arm and settled in his chest, a feeling he hadn’t had since before his divorce. He’d spent so long telling himself any kind of casual connection was more trouble than it was worth, that all the gossip about her meant she was exactly the kind of chaos he didn’t need in his quiet life, that he almost stepped back, almost made an excuse to leave.
She popped the hushpuppy in her mouth, wiped crumbs off her jeans, and said, “I know everyone in town thinks I’m a homewrecking whore. You don’t have to be polite. But I also know how to TIG weld, put myself through law school working at an auto body shop in Raleigh, and I’ve got a 1968 Triumph Bonneville sitting in my garage that hasn’t run in 10 years. I’ll pay you double your hourly rate to look at it, and I’ve got a case of local IPA in my fridge that’s way better than the cheap stuff they’re serving here.”
The fryers cut out for a second, and he could hear crickets starting to buzz in the trees at the edge of the parking lot, a group of guys from the VFW laughing so hard one of them snort-laughed, the distant rumble of a motorcycle driving down the main road. He thought about the guys he’d gone to high school with who’d called women like Mara trouble, who’d warned him not to get mixed up with anyone the town side-eyed, who’d spent their whole lives playing it safe and ended up miserable, married to women they hated, working jobs they couldn’t stand. He thought about the last eight years, eating frozen dinners alone in his barn, only talking to people when they dropped off bikes, and how bored he’d been, how he’d started to think he’d feel that empty forever.
He tossed his half-eaten plate of catfish in the trash can next to the truck, grabbed his oil-stained work jacket off the door handle, and nodded. She smiled, a real one, crinkles at the corners of her eyes, and led him to her beat-up Subaru, her boots kicking up loose gravel in the parking lot.
The Triumph was in better shape than he’d expected, only needed a new carburetor and a tune up, and they sat on her back porch after he’d looked it over, drinking beer, watching fireflies blink on and off over the back yard. She leaned her head on his shoulder when he told her the story about dropping a transmission on his foot when he was 22, and he didn’t pull away. He reached for her hand, calloused fingers lacing through hers, and didn’t care who would talk about it come Monday morning.
