Rafe Ortega, 52, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a pole barn on three scrubby acres outside Missoula, Montana. He hasn’t dated anyone since his wife left him for a commercial real estate broker eight years prior, his only regular social outings a weekly trivia night at The Rusty Tap, where he sits at the far end of the bar, drinks bourbon neat, and keeps to himself unless his team needs a random fact about 1990s wildfire suppression protocols or vintage Airstream model years. His worst flaw, if you ask the few friends he has left, is that he’s held onto the resentment from his divorce so tight he’s cut off every person even tangentially connected to his ex-wife, convinced any tie to that part of his life will only drag more pain into the quiet, predictable routine he’s built for himself.
The third week of September, the bar is packed for trivia, the muted TVs playing a college football pregame show, the air thick with the smell of fried cheese curds and cheap draft beer. He’s wiping flecks of bondo dust off his flannel sleeve when he catches a whiff of vanilla and pine, sharp and warm, before someone slides into the stool two down from him. He glances over, and his jaw tightens. Elara Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who used to crash their place for two weeks every summer when she was a teen, is grinning at him like she didn’t just materialize out of the part of his past he’s spent a decade burying. She’s 44 now, her dark hair streaked with a single stripe of silver at the temple, her nail polish chipped navy, calluses on the pads of her fingers he recognizes from rock climbing, a hobby she rambled about nonstop when she was 17.
The bartender sets Rafe’s bourbon down halfway between their stools, and she reaches over to pass it to him, their knuckles brushing for half a second. He flinches like he’s been burned, and she laughs, low and warm, not offended. “Heard you were still around,” she says, leaning forward a little, her shoulder almost touching his when a group of guys in hunting gear shove past to get to a booth in the back. “Just moved back to run the adult literacy program at the public library. Knew I’d run into you here eventually.”
He doesn’t answer at first, sipping his bourbon, his mind racing. It’s wrong, talking to her, he knows that. His ex would throw a fit if she found out, the small town gossip mill would churn so hard it’d break, he’d spent years telling anyone who asked that he wanted nothing to do with that entire side of the family. But she’s asking about the 1972 Airstream he posted about on the local community Facebook page last month, her eyes lit up like he’s talking about a trip to the moon, and when her teammate bails mid-trivia to take an emergency work call, she slides onto the stool right next to him, their shoulders pressed tight together, the heat of her seeping through his flannel.
She leans in to whisper answers in his ear when the trivia host reads off the questions, her breath warm against his neck, smelling like cinnamon hard candy and that same pine vanilla perfume. He finds himself leaning in too, whispering back dumb jokes about the time she snuck into his old trailer to borrow his entire collection of Stephen King paperbacks and got caught hiding them in her suitcase when she left to go home. By the end of the night, their team wins by three points, splitting the $150 bar tab prize, and she asks if he’ll drive her out to his shop to see the Airstream in person. He hesitates for half a second, the part of him that’s spent years avoiding anything tied to his ex screaming that this is a bad idea, that it’s taboo, that he’ll regret it, before he nods, grabbing his keys off the bar.
His Ford F150’s heat is stuck on high, so she rolls down the passenger window, her hair blowing against his arm when he turns onto the dirt road leading to his property. The string lights strung across the pole barn are still on, left on by habit, and when he opens the shop door, the smell of sawdust and aluminum polish hits them both. She walks straight to the Airstream, running her hand along the polished silver siding, and he steps up behind her, his hand brushing the small of her back for half a second when he leans past to point out the custom walnut cabinetry he’s building inside the door. She turns around, her face soft in the warm glow of the string lights, and kisses him first, slow, no rush, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, still dusty with bondo. He doesn’t pull away.
They sit on the built-in bench inside the Airstream for two hours, drinking the rest of the bourbon he keeps in the shop’s mini fridge, talking about her plans to drive cross country once she’s saved up enough for a trailer of her own, his plans to take a month off next summer to drive up to Alaska. He walks her back to her car when the clock on his phone hits 11, and she makes him promise to take her to the local axe throwing range the following Saturday, a hobby he hasn’t touched since before his divorce. He leans against the bed of his truck and watches her taillights fade down the dirt road, the cool fall air stinging his cheeks, and he reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone, deleting the block he put on every number connected to his ex-wife’s side of the family three years prior.
