Roy Prakash, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller before he retired two years back, the kind of guy who still keeps a pocket notebook full of scrawled reminders and refuses to throw out any hat that’s got a frayed brim. His worst flaw, one his ex-wife yelled at him for hundreds of times, is he holds grudges until they rot right alongside the old fishing lures he keeps in the bed of his dented 2008 F150. For 18 years, top of that grudge list was Clara Hale, his ex’s former college roommate and supposed best friend, the woman he’d been convinced ratted him out for sneaking off on weekend walleye trips instead of attending her sister’s baby showers and boring work mixers, the final excuse his ex had used to file for divorce.
He’s standing in the middle of the annual township fire department barbecue, beer sweating through the paper coaster in his hand, when he turns too fast to avoid a kid chasing a golden retriever with a popsicle, and sloshes a good half inch of IPA down the front of a woman’s cream linen button-down. When she laughs instead of snapping, he blinks, and realizes it’s her. Silver streaks thread through the dark chestnut hair he remembered pulled back in tight ponytails, now falling loose around her shoulders, and her arms are dotted with faint freckles and tiny scratch marks he later learns are from repotting rose bushes at the nursery she’s run for the past 12 years. She smells like lavender hand cream and cut grass, the scent cutting through the thick fog of brisket smoke and charcoal hanging over the field.
He grabs a handful of napkins from the stack on the picnic table behind him, stammers out an apology, and when he reaches to dab at the beer spot just above her elbow, his knuckle brushes the soft skin of her forearm, and he feels a jolt he hasn’t felt since he was 19 and sneaking into drive-in movies with his high school girlfriend. She doesn’t flinch. She just takes one of the napkins from him, swipes at the spot, and teases him for still being as clumsy as he was the time he tripped over his own cooler at the 2004 Fourth of July party, spilling a full bucket of potato salad all over his ex’s new sundress.
His first instinct is to turn and walk away. He’s spent almost two decades hating this woman, for God’s sake, has changed grocery stores twice just to avoid running into her. But all the picnic tables are full, and when she nods toward the tailgate of his truck parked 20 feet away, says she’s got a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies in her tote and he can share if he stops scowling, he finds himself agreeing before he can talk himself out of it.
They sit shoulder to shoulder on the warm metal tailgate, the sound of the high school marching band’s cover of John Mellencamp drifting over from the stage, kids screaming as they race through the bounce house off to the left. She tells him she retired from her insurance job 10 years back, bought the nursery on the west edge of town after her own divorce, spends most days covered in dirt and talking to the tomato plants like they’re old friends. He tells her about the fishing cabin he’s building up by the lake, how he spends three days a week there now, no cell service, no one yelling at him for tracking mud on the carpet. The gap between them shrinks slowly, her thigh brushing his every time someone walks past to get to the beer tent, their hands brushing when they both reach for a cookie at the same time. He keeps catching her staring at his mouth, then looking away fast, the tips of her ears pink.
The big reveal hits when he finally brings up the divorce, voice gruff, says he never thought she’d be the type to snitch on a guy for wanting a little time to himself. She goes quiet for a second, then laughs, sharp and surprised, and tells him she never said a word. His ex had been cheating on him with a guy from her office for six months before the divorce, she says, and when the ex asked her to lie and say she’d seen Roy out drinking with other women on those fishing trips, she refused. That’s why the ex cut her off, not because she ratted him out. She says she’d always thought he deserved better, anyway, that he was too nice to be stuck with someone who cared more about country club memberships than whether he came home happy at the end of the day.
The air between them goes thick, warm enough that he forgets the 65-degree breeze coming off the cornfield behind them. He leans in, slow, gives her plenty of time to pull away, and she doesn’t. Her lips are softer than he expected, taste like peach iced tea and mint gum, and when her hand comes up to rest on the side of his neck, her palm is warm, calloused at the fingertips from all the planting. The world fades out for a second, no band, no screaming kids, no brisket smoke, just the press of her mouth against his, the faint lavender scent sticking to his shirt when she shifts closer.
They pull apart when a fireman yells over the speaker that the 50/50 raffle drawing is starting in 10 minutes. She grins, swipes a thumb across his lower lip to wipe off the faint gloss she’s wearing, and asks him if he wants to get coffee at the little diner on Main Street tomorrow morning, says she can bring him a free tomato plant from the nursery if he promises not to hold any more grudges against her for stuff she never did. He nods, hands her his old flip phone—he still refuses to buy a smartphone, says they’re too complicated—and she types her number in, her thumb brushing his knuckle when she passes it back.
He tucks his phone into the breast pocket of his faded flannel shirt, and for the first time in 18 years, he doesn’t feel the sharp, familiar twinge of resentment when he thinks about his divorce.
