Rafe Mendez, 49, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a cinder block garage behind his east Tennessee home, and he hasn’t attended a neighborhood block party since his wife Ellie died three years prior. The only reason he showed up this July afternoon was the 16-year-old kid next door, who’d begged him for three days straight to bring his award-winning smoked brisket, promising he wouldn’t have to stick around longer than half an hour. He’d agreed mostly to get the kid off his porch.
Sweat sticks the faded Willie Nelson tee to his shoulders as he leans against the tailgate of his dented 1998 F150, picking at a stray piece of brisket fat while the hum of cornhole boards, screaming kids chasing the ice cream truck, and clinking beer cans wraps around him. He’s got one foot propped on the bumper, already mentally running through his to-do list for the 1968 Scotty Sportsman he’s finishing up for a couple from Asheville, when a soft voice pulls him out of his head.
Lena Carter moved into the blue bungalow three doors down two weeks prior, runs a small herbal apothecary out of the front room, and he’s spent the last 14 days pretending to be busy tightening bolts on his truck every time she walks her golden retriever past his garage at 7 a.m. She’s holding a mason jar of peach sweet tea in one hand, the hem of her butter-yellow sundress smudged with honey from the jars she filled that morning, and a faint lavender stain streaks her left wrist where she spilled a batch of sleep salve the night before. She stands close enough that he can smell peppermint and jasmine on her, no heavy perfume, just the scent of whatever she’s been mixing all day, and when she leans in to point at a long scratch on the side of his truck bed, her bare shoulder brushes his bicep. He flinches first, out of habit, then relaxes, surprised by how warm her skin is through the thin cotton of his shirt. She admits she scraped it three days prior, hauling a reclaimed wood countertop into her shop, and has been kicking herself ever since, too nervous to knock on his door and apologize.
He laughs, tells her the truck has way worse damage from the time he hit a deer on the way to a trailer show in Kentucky, and she grins, handing him her jar of tea to try. Her fingers brush his when she passes it over, short nails painted soft sage, a thick callus on her index finger from tying herb bundles for hours at a time, and he has to stop himself from turning his hand over to lace their fingers together. He’s been telling himself for three years he’s done with this, that dating feels like a betrayal of Ellie, that he’s too old for the back and forth, but when she teases him about his brisket rub, saying her grandma used the exact same mix of paprika and brown sugar and swore anyone who changed it was committing a southern felony, he finds himself leaning in, not pulling away. She tells him she’s been hunting for a 1972 Airstream to turn into a mobile pop-up for her apothecary, to set up at farmers markets across the state, and he nearly chokes on his tea—he’s got a half-restored 1972 Airstream sitting in his garage, a project he started with Ellie before she got sick, that he’s been too cowardly to sell.
The sky opens up before he can answer, fat warm summer raindrops slamming down so hard they bounce off the asphalt, and everyone around them yells, scrambling for cover. He grabs her arm without thinking, yanking her under the small awning strung over his tailgate, and they press shoulder to hip to shoulder under the tiny space, rain pounding so loud they can barely hear the people yelling from under the nearby pavilion. Her hair is stuck to her forehead, a drop of rain rolling down her jaw and onto the neck of her dress, and she doesn’t step back, just looks up at him, dark eyes crinkling at the corners. She says she doesn’t usually do this, but she’s been staring at him across the street since she moved in, saw him carrying a sheet of aluminum for a trailer a week prior, shirt off, sun glinting off the tattoo of Ellie’s name on his ribs, and couldn’t stop thinking about him. He doesn’t say anything for a second, the old guilt twisting in his chest, then he remembers the last thing Ellie told him before she died, to stop moping, to go have a life that felt as big as the road trips they used to plan. He tells her he’s got that Airstream, if she wants to come look at it tomorrow.
The rain lets up as quick as it started, leaving the air thick with the smell of wet grass and cut pine, and the kids immediately run back out to splash in puddles. She says she’ll be over at 2, and she’ll bring peach cobbler to go with the smoked sausage sandwiches he offers to make. She tucks a wet strand of hair behind her ear, her knuckle brushing his jaw by accident, and neither of them apologizes. She waves as she turns to walk back to her house, her golden retriever trotting up to greet her, and she leans down to scratch his ears, laughing when he shakes rain all over her dress. Rafe stands there for another minute, twisting the small tin of lavender lip balm she pressed into his palm before she left, the label decorated with a hand-drawn sunflower. He twists the lid off, swipes a little across his bottom lip; it tastes like honey and rain.
