Javier Mendez is 52, makes his living restoring vintage Japanese motorcycles out of a cinder block shop on the edge of Silverton, Oregon, and has not voluntarily attended a town block party in 11 years. The only reason he’s here now, sweating through the armpits of his sun-faded plaid flannel, is his 17-year-old apprentice Milo, who’d badgered him for three straight weeks to come try his mom’s prize-winning peach pie. Javier’s got a crippling sweet tooth he hides from everyone who walks through his shop doors, so he’d caved.
He leans against a splintered pine pole at the edge of the beer tent, nursing a $3 domestic lager, and scans the crowd for the pie stand Milo rambled about. His hands are crusted with old grease he never fully scrubs out, nails chipped from prying rusted bolts free, and he’s already mentally running through the list of repairs he could be knocking out right now if he’d stayed home. Then he spots it, the rickety wooden stand strung with fairy lights, hand-painted sign reading LENA’S PEACH PIE nailed to the front.
Lena is behind the counter, auburn hair streaked with sunlit gray tied back with a red gingham bandana, a smudge of flour high on her left cheek, laughing as she hands a paper plate to a kid in a Little League uniform. Javier freezes. He’s avoided her for six months, ever since Milo first showed up to his shop with a permission slip scrawled in her loopy cursive. It feels like a line you don’t cross, hitting on your apprentice’s mom, even if Milo had offhandedly mentioned last month that she’s been divorced for four years, even if he’d caught her staring at him through the shop front window once when she dropped Milo off, the corner of her mouth tilted up like she knew he was watching her back.
He walks over before he can talk himself out of it. She looks up when he steps into the shade of the stand’s awning, and her smile softens, not the wide customer service grin she’d had for the kid, something slower, warmer. “Milo said you’d show up eventually,” she says, reaching for a paper plate. When she slides the slice of pie across the counter, their fingers brush. He feels the callus on the pad of her thumb, rough from years of rolling dough, and she doesn’t yank her hand away immediately, just holds the contact for a beat longer than polite, her hazel eyes locking with his. He can smell lavender from her perfume mixed with the sweet, warm tang of baked peach and buttery crust, and he has to fight the urge to lean in closer.
He pays her, leans against the counter while he eats, tells her about the 1978 Honda CB750 they’re rebuilding for a retired teacher from the high school, how Milo figured out how to fix a stuck carburetor last week that Javier had been stumped on for three days. She listens, leaning her hip against the counter so her arm is pressed to his, nodding, asking questions that aren’t just small talk, like she actually cares about the work he does. His chest feels tight, like he’s forgotten how to talk to someone who isn’t here to ask for a repair quote or complain about a price. He’s spent 11 years keeping everyone at arm’s length, ever since his ex-wife left because he cared more about a 1969 Kawasaki W800 than he did about their marriage, and this feels too easy, too good, like he’s breaking some unwritten rule.
A pack of preteen boys comes tearing past, yelling, one slamming full force into Javier’s side. He stumbles forward, catching himself on the edge of the pie stand, his left shoulder brushing the soft curve of her chest. They both freeze for half a second, and then she laughs, low and warm, no awkwardness, just amusement. “Easy there,” she says, swatting playfully at his arm. “I already dropped two pies today, I don’t need a third.”
He apologizes, already stepping back, already bracing himself for her to be annoyed, for her to tell him to leave. Instead, she reaches out, wraps her fingers around his forearm, the heat of her palm seeping through the thin cotton of his flannel. “Stay,” she says, nodding at the half-empty pie tin behind her. “I close up in 10 minutes. We can split the last slice. Milo’s at the carnival rides with his friends, won’t be back for hours.”
He hesitates for half a second, the part of him that’s spent 11 years avoiding anything that could end messy screaming to say no, to go back to his shop, to his bikes, to the quiet he’s gotten used to. But she’s still holding his arm, her thumb brushing the scar he got from a dropped exhaust pipe three years ago, and he can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that, like he’s more than just the gruff motorcycle guy who lives alone in the cottage behind his shop. He nods.
He sits on the folding chair behind the stand while she wipes down the counter, stacks the paper plates in a plastic bin. She hands him a fork when she’s done, slides the last slice of pie between them, and they split it, their knees bumping under the rickety folding table every time one of them shifts. He tells her about the bike he built for an Army vet who lost his leg in Afghanistan, how the guy cried when he sat on it for the first time. She tells him how she started selling pies after her divorce, when she couldn’t pick up enough shifts at the diner to pay for Milo’s motorcycle lessons. The sun dips below the oak trees at the edge of the park, pink and orange bleeding across the sky, fireflies starting to blink in the long grass at the edge of the field. She leans her head on his shoulder for two slow, warm seconds, then pulls back, grinning, wiping a smudge of pie filling off the corner of his mouth with her thumb.
“You wanna take me for a ride on that CB750 later?” she says. “Milo told me you finally got it running last week.”
He grins back, the first real, unforced grin he’s had in 11 years, already reaching for his keys in his flannel pocket. “Only if you promise to bring me a whole peach pie to the shop next week.”
