Elias Voss is 57, makes his living sanding dents out of 1960s Airstreams and re-caulking leaky Boler windows for folks within a 60-mile radius of his tiny Oregon coast town. He’s spent the last 8 years living by rigid rules: no staying out past 9 unless on a roadside repair call, no letting clients pay him in homemade food (too much awkward small talk), no even entertaining the thought of asking anyone out, not after his wife’s cancer moved faster than he could finish the cross-country trailer they’d planned to retire in. His least favorite rule, enforced with almost religious devotion, was avoiding the town’s annual summer beer garden fundraiser entirely—too many neighbors asking why he was still alone, too many well-meaning attempts to set him up with their cousins or divorcee coworkers. He only showed up this year because the fire department asked him to donate a custom restored trailer keychain for the silent auction, and he couldn’t say no to the crew that put out the electrical fire in his shop two years prior. He grabbed an IPA from the keg line, planned to drop the keychain off and be back in his quiet workshop in 10 minutes flat.
He didn’t count on Mara. She was the new neighbor who’d bought the house two lots down three months prior, ran the native plant nursery on the edge of town, the woman he’d only ever exchanged stiff, distant waves with over the split-rail fence between their properties. She stepped around a golden retriever chasing a toddler with a popsicle, her boots catching on a loose patch of grass, and slammed straight into his chest. The IPA sloshed over the rim of the cup, soaking a dark splotch into the front of her faded flannel shirt and the shoulder of his own work flannel. She reeled back a half step, then laughed, loud and bright over the hum of the bluegrass band playing off to the side of the field. She didn’t step any further away, close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and the sharp, sweet clove of the hard cider in her plastic cup, close enough that he could see the tiny smudge of potting soil under her left eye and the way her silver hoop earrings caught the golden hour light bleeding over the ocean. “Shit, my bad,” she said, dabbing at the wet spot on his shoulder with a crumpled napkin she pulled from her jeans pocket. Her hand brushed his forearm through the thin flannel, warm even through the fabric, and he felt the back of his neck heat up like he was 16 again fumbling through his first date.
He mumbled an apology, offered to buy her a new cider, fully expecting her to laugh it off and go back to her group of friends. Instead, she nodded, and when he came back from the keg line she’d claimed an empty spot at a splintered pine picnic table, patting the bench next to her. He sat, his knee brushing hers under the table when a group of teens walked past, and he almost jumped like he’d been shocked. They talked for an hour, first about the mess the beer had made, then about the 1972 Boler he’d been restoring in his driveway the week prior—she’d stopped to look over the fence once, she admitted, had her own 1970 Playpac parked behind her house that she was fixing up to drive down to Big Sur for a month once her kid graduated college and moved to Austin. She asked if he’d be willing to take a look at the tiny leak in its roof, offered to pay him in the peach pie she’d baked that morning, still warm on her kitchen counter. He almost said no, almost fell back on his rule about not taking food as payment, almost made up an excuse about a stack of work orders he had to get to that night. But she was leaning forward, her elbow resting on the table, her eyes locked on his like he was the only interesting person in the crowded field, and he couldn’t make himself say it. He nodded instead.
The silent auction wrapped up a half hour later, the fire chief announcing the winners over a crackling speaker, and Elias stood, wiping peanut shell crumbs off his jeans, planning to say he’d swing by her place the next afternoon. She stood too, slinging her canvas tote bag over her shoulder, and stepped closer, so close the edge of her cider cup brushed his wrist. “I don’t feel like sitting in an empty house by myself tonight,” she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it over the noise of the crowd. “You wanna come look at the leak now? The pie’s still warm. No pressure if you don’t.” He hesitated for half a second, his brain jumping to the empty workshop waiting for him, the cold leftovers in his fridge, the 8 years of rules he’d built his entire life around. Then he thought about the way her hand had felt on his forearm, the smell of her sunscreen, the way she’d laughed at his dumb joke about how many caulk tubes he went through in a month. He nodded.
They walked the two blocks to her house slow, the crickets chirping in the bushes lining the sidewalk, the faint sound of the ocean crashing a few blocks away carrying on the warm summer breeze. She linked her arm through his halfway there, her hand curled around his bicep, and he didn’t pull away. When they got to her front porch, she fumbled in her jeans pocket for her keys, dropping them on the weathered wood porch step. He bent to pick them up at the same time she did, their heads bumping gently, and she laughed again, the sound light and warm in the dark. He handed her the keys, she turned the lock, and the sweet, rich smell of baked peach and cinnamon rolled out over the porch before she pulled him over the threshold.
