Rudy Voss is 61, spends most days covered in aluminum dust and spray adhesive restoring vintage travel trailers out of his shop on the edge of Burns, Oregon. His biggest flaw, per the one friend he’s made since moving east three years prior, is that he’s convinced any casual connection not tied to axle alignments or sealant replacements is a waste of time. His wife left him for a retired ski instructor eight years ago, and he’d decided dating after 50 was just a sad parade of awkward first dates and unmet expectations, so he’d sworn off it entirely. He only showed up to the town’s annual harvest festival because a long-time client promised to hand off a rare 1968 Airstream window latch he’d tracked down, and Rudy didn’t want to drive 40 minutes to the guy’s ranch the next day.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden pole in the beer tent, sipping a hazy IPA that tastes better than he expected, when a woman bumps hard into his side. Peach hard cider sloshes over the rim of her cup, splattering three small spots on the sleeve of his gray work flannel, the one dotted with permanent glue stains and a tiny burn mark from a soldering iron accident last spring. She gasps, dabs frantically at the wet fabric with a crumpled napkin from her jeans pocket, and he recognizes her immediately: Clara Marlow, the new county librarian he’d dropped a box of 1970s cross-country travel guides off at two weeks prior. Her elbow brushes his ribcage as she leans in, and he can smell lavender lotion mixed with the sweet, fermented tang of the cider on her breath, can see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes when she finally looks up to apologize.
He finds himself agreeing to that refill. They sit on a scratchy hay bale at the edge of the tent, and she tells him she’d stayed up half the night reading the 1972 guide he’d dropped off, marking every old roadside diner and forgotten campground within a six hour drive with little pink sticky notes. He tells her about the 1965 Avion he’s restoring for a couple from Portland, about the time he drove a 1970 Shasta from Texas to Oregon alone when he was 22, stopping at every weird tourist trap he passed. Their knees bump every time one of them shifts to get more comfortable, and when she leans in to tell him about the 1957 first edition of *On the Road* her dad left her, he can feel the heat off her shoulder even though the October air is hovering right at 50 degrees.
When the band wraps up their set and the crowd starts to thin out, she says she lives three blocks away, asks if he wants to come see that first edition, and the collection of vintage travel postcards she’s been building since she was a kid. He hesitates for a full ten seconds, thinking about the rumors that would spread around town by Monday, about the rule he’d made for himself eight years prior that he’d never let anyone get close again. But she’s tilting her head at him, smiling that same crinkly-eyed smile, and he nods.
They walk slow down the dark residential street, streetlights casting golden splotches on the sidewalk, and their hands brush twice when they step over a crack in the concrete, neither of them pulling away. When they get to her front porch, she turns to face him, standing so close their chests almost touch, and says “I’ve been wanting to ask you out since you walked into the library with that box of books. Was scared you’d shut me down before I got the chance.” He kisses her before he can overthink it, tastes peach cider and mint gum on her lips, feels the chill of her silver rings against the back of his neck when she tangles her fingers in his hair.
He stays the night, wakes up to the smell of bacon frying and her old tabby cat curled on his chest. She’s sitting at the kitchen table in an oversized flannel of her own, flipping through that 1972 travel guide, and when he sits down next to her she points to a little diner in southern Idaho, says it’s right on the route he’s taking to deliver that restored Avion next month, asks if he wants to stop. He pours her a cup of black coffee, the way she said she liked it the night before. He rests his hand on her knee, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to pull away.
