Javi Mendez, 58, made his living restoring antique typewriters out of the cinder block garage attached to his tiny mountain cabin outside Marshall, North Carolina. For 12 years, he’d avoided every town function, from the Fourth of July fireworks to the Christmas potluck, convinced that small talk was a waste of time and that anyone who sought him out only wanted free repair work. His flaw was a quiet, stubborn guilt: he’d moved to the hills after his wife Maria died of ovarian cancer, and he’d spent over a decade telling himself that enjoying anything that didn’t involve his work or caring for his old hound dog was a betrayal of her memory. He’d only agreed to run the apple butter booth at the annual harvest festival because his next door neighbor’s 7-year-old had woken up with a raging ear infection, and she’d begged him to cover three hours of her shift while she took the kid to the ER.
The October air bit at his ears, sharp with pine, burnt sugar, and the sharp, yeasty smell of fried dough from the funnel cake stand three booths down. A local bluegrass band sawed through a Merle Haggard cover on the small stage at the end of the street, and kids screamed as they chased each other through piles of crunched red and gold oak leaves. Javi leaned against the burlap-covered booth table, sipping lukewarm coffee from a dented thermos, counting the minutes until he could go home.
He didn’t notice Elara Voss walk up until she was leaning against the booth’s wooden post, close enough that he could smell the mix of old paper and vanilla lotion on her sweater. At 52, she’d been the town’s part-time librarian for 10 years, and everyone in Marshall joked that she was a spinster who hated men, that she’d turned down every date request from every bachelor in a 20-mile radius. Javi had spoken to her exactly twice before, both times when he’d picked up old repair manuals from the library’s free table, and she’d barely said three words to him each time. She was wearing a faded green flannel, unbuttoned just enough at the collar to show a thin silver chain around her neck, and there was a smudge of orange pumpkin pie on the left side of her jaw.
She nodded at the jars of apple butter lined up on the table. “How much for the small one?” Her voice was low, a little smoky, like she drank too much black coffee and spent half her time yelling at teens for sneaking candy into the nonfiction section.
“Five bucks.” Javi reached for the jar she was pointing at, and when their fingers brushed as she handed him the cash, he fumbled it. She leaned across the table to catch it before it hit the ground, her forearm pressing firm against his chest for a beat, the heat of her skin seeping through his own flannel shirt. She didn’t pull away immediately, just grinned up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold from the string lights strung over the booth. “Clumsy today, huh?”
Heat crawled up the back of his neck. He’d not been this close to a woman he found attractive since Maria died, and every alarm in his head was blaring. Half of him wanted to lean in, brush the pie smudge off her jaw, ask her what she was doing later. The other half screamed that he was too old, too rusty at this, that everyone walking past the booth was staring, that Maria would be disappointed he was even thinking about another woman. He wiped his palms on the thighs of his worn work jeans, nodded, and handed her the jar.
He expected her to walk away. She didn’t. She leaned against the post again, crossing her arms, the flannel pulling tight across her shoulders, and asked him what he did when he wasn’t selling apple butter for his neighbor. He told her about the typewriter repair business, half expecting her eyes to glaze over, but she leaned in a little, tilting her head like she was actually listening. She asked him about the hardest machine he’d ever fixed, laughed when he told her about a 1920s Underwood someone had used as a flower pot for 30 years, the keys caked with potting soil and dead root systems.
He couldn’t stop staring at the pie smudge on her jaw. He fought the urge to touch it for 10 full minutes, until she paused mid-sentence about a collection of 19th century poetry she’d just added to the library’s archives, and raised an eyebrow. “You gonna say something about the pie on my face, or just keep staring at it?”
Javi froze. For half a second, he thought about lying, about saying he wasn’t staring. Instead, he reached across the table, used the back of his clean, calloused hand to wipe the smudge off her jaw, his knuckles brushing soft, warm skin as he did. She didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, just held his gaze, her lips turning up a little at the corner. “I’ve been leaving old typewriter repair manuals on your porch for the last eight months,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear her over the noise of the festival. “Was wondering if you ever noticed.”
He blinked. He’d found half a dozen dog-eared repair manuals on his front step over the last year, and he’d assumed they were from his neighbor’s kid, who loved tinkering with old machines. He had a stack of them on his workbench, used them every week to fix tricky machines for clients. “I thought those were a gift from the 7-year-old next door,” he said, laughing a little, the tight knot of guilt in his chest loosening for the first time in years. “I use them all the time. They’ve saved me at least three different repair jobs.”
She laughed, the sound warm and bright, cutting through the fiddle music. “I never had the nerve to knock. Everyone says you hate visitors.”
“I hate visitors who want free work,” he said, before he could overthink it. “I wouldn’t have minded you knocking.” He hesitated for half a second, then nodded at the funnel cake stand at the end of the street. “I’m done here in 15 minutes. You wanna split one? They dust ’em with cinnamon sugar.”
She smiled, the kind of smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes, and nodded. “I’ve been standing here pretending to care about apple butter for 12 minutes waiting for you to ask. Thought you’d never get around to it.”
The next 15 minutes dragged. Javi counted down the seconds until his neighbor showed up, red-eyed but relieved, saying her kid just had a bad infection and was fine. He handed over the cash box and the remaining jars of apple butter, grabbed his thermos, and walked with Elara across the festival grounds, crunched oak leaves shifting under his scuffed work boots. The bluegrass band switched to a slow, waltzing cover of Patsy Cline’s *Crazy* as they walked, and when a group of kids running with sticky candy apples darted between them, he hesitated for half a beat, then slipped his calloused hand into hers. She laced their fingers together immediately, her palm a little cold from the hard cider she’d been drinking, but it fit perfectly in his, like it was made to be there. When they reached the funnel cake booth, she tugged him closer to her side to let a group of costumed kids pass, and he rested his free hand lightly on her waist, the soft fabric of her flannel warm under his palm.
