Mace Rainer, 53, has spent most of his adult life hunched over the cracked metal frames of antique typewriters, his calloused fingers prying loose stuck keys and restringing snapped ribbons until machines that haven’t worked in 60 years tap out crisp, even letters again. He moved to Newport, Oregon eight years prior, right after his divorce, to get as far away from his ex-wife and the business partner she’d cheated on him with as possible, and he’s barely spoken to anyone from his old life since. The grudge is heavy, but it’s familiar, and he’s stubborn enough to cling to it even when he’s lonely enough to talk to the half-feral tabby that hangs around his shop for 20 minutes straight after closing.
He’s manning his booth at the town’s annual summer street fair when he sees her. The air is thick with the greasy smell of fried Oreos from the food stand three stalls down, and the kid selling tie-dye next to him has been blasting bass-heavy EDM so loud Mace’s molars have been buzzing for two hours. He’s wiping a smudge of machine oil off the face of a 1952 Royal when a shadow falls over his table, and he looks up to find Lila Marlow leaning against the edge of the folding table, a half-eaten snow cone in one hand, the gap between her two front teeth on display as she grins.
He freezes. She’s his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who used to crash their Thanksgiving dinners back in Portland, who’d sit on the floor of his old workshop for hours asking him about the typewriters while the rest of the family bickered about politics in the living room. He’d had a stupid, guilty crush on her back then, the kind he never admitted to anyone, even himself half the time, and he’d deliberately cut off all contact with her after the divorce to avoid the temptation of reaching out. She’s 38 now, her dark curly hair streaked with blonde from the sun, a dusting of freckles across her nose, wearing a cutoff denim shirt that shows off the tattoo of a typewriter on her left forearm he’s never seen before.
“Mace? I swore that was you,” she says, leaning further over the table, and their elbows brush when he reaches for his sweating glass of lemonade. The jolt goes all the way up his arm, and he fumbles the glass, sloshing a little lemonade onto the tablecloth. She laughs, low and warm, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and mint gum on her when she leans in to wipe the spill up with a napkin from her pocket. She says she moved to town three weeks prior to teach high school art, that she’d asked his ex if she knew anyone out here who could help her find a cheap used desk, and his ex had offhandedly mentioned Mace lived in Newport.
His first instinct is to say he’s busy, that he doesn’t associate with anyone connected to his ex, that he’s got a backlog of 12 typewriters to fix before the end of the month and no time to play tour guide. But she’s looking at him like he’s the only interesting thing at the fair, her dark eyes not drifting away even when a group of screaming kids runs past the booth, and he can’t bring himself to say no. He asks her what she wants him to type for her, the custom poems he sells for five dollars a pop, and she tells him to surprise her. His hands shake a little as he types, the clack of the keys loud over the music, and when he hands her the sheet of paper their fingers brush, her palm soft and warm against his calloused one. She holds on for a beat longer than she needs to, her thumb brushing the scar on his knuckle from when he dropped a 30-pound Underwood on his hand two years prior.
By the time the fair shuts down, the sun is dipping low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and tangerine. She offers to help him carry his boxes of typewriters to his beat-up 2008 Ford Ranger, and he lets her, even though he’s got a bad knee and should be carrying the heavier boxes himself. She’s hauling a box of portable Royals to the truck bed when she trips over a loose curb stone, and he reaches out to catch her, his hands wrapping around her waist, her hands flying to his shoulders to steady herself. They’re inches apart, he can taste the cherry from her snow cone on her breath when she speaks, quiet enough only he can hear it. “I always thought you were too good for her, you know that?”
He doesn’t say anything. He just leans in and kisses her, slow, not pushing, and she kisses him back, her fingers tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck. He knows the small town gossip mill will eat this alive if anyone sees them, knows his ex will blow up his phone and call him every name in the book if she finds out, knows he’s breaking every stupid rule he set for himself eight years ago. For the first time in as long as he can remember, he doesn’t care.
They stop at the corner market on the way back to his place for cold beer and a bag of salt and vinegar chips, his hand resting on the center console of the truck, his pinky brushing hers the whole drive. He unlocks the door to his shop, the familiar smell of old metal and ink wrapping around them, and she walks straight to the 1920s Underwood he’s been restoring for months, running her finger along the cracked wooden case. He flicks on the string lights strung above the workbench, and laces his fingers through hers when she turns to face him.
