Elroy Voss, 59, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a weathered barn 12 miles outside Asheville, North Carolina. He’s stubborn to a fault, has skipped every local community event for eight straight years ever since his wife left him for a real estate agent with a Tesla and a vacation home in Boca, and swears the only company he needs is his hound dog Mabel and the steady drone of his orbital sander. The only reason he’s at the county fair on a sticky Thursday evening is his 28-year-old cousin begged him to man the beef jerky booth for an hour while he ran to pick up more ice.
He’s leaning against the cinder block wall of the fried Oreo stand, work flannel unbuttoned over a faded Waylon Jennings tee, a half-smoked menthol tucked behind his ear, when a woman slams into his side. Her iced peach tea sloshes over the rim of the plastic cup, splattering dark drops across the scuffed leather of his work boots. She cusses, soft and sharp, and fumbles for a crumpled napkin in her jeans pocket before he can even process what happened.
She’s 56, he realizes when he gets a good look at her, silver streak cutting through the chestnut waves falling over her shoulders, same one he’d stared at for three straight days at a lake house back in 1986, right before he proposed to her cousin. Lila. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce papers were signed, since he’d avoided every family gathering like the plague because he’d always carried a stupid, unspoken thing for her that he’d never dared name, not even to himself. Back then, she was off limits, family adjacent, married to a high school football coach who lived three states away. Now she’s here, dabbing at his boot with a napkin, her hand brushing his calf through the denim of his work jeans, and he can smell coconut shampoo and vanilla lip balm over the heavy scent of fried dough and diesel from the fair rides.
He freezes up at first, that old familiar war in his chest flaring: disgust at himself for even noticing how good she looks, how her smile still crinkles the corners of her eyes the same way it did when they were kids, desire so thick he can almost taste it, sharp and sweet as the peach tea she’s still holding. She stands up, leaning in so close her shoulder presses against his bicep, and taps the grease smudge on the left side of his jaw with her index finger. “Still look like you’d rather be elbow deep in an engine bay than surrounded by cotton candy and screaming toddlers, huh Voss?”
He laughs, rough and surprised, and lets her tug him away from the booth, his cousin yelling a teasing “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do” after them as they walk. Her arm brushes his every three steps, the soft cotton of her linen shirt catching on the frayed edge of his flannel sleeve, and she doesn’t pull away when their knuckles brush as they pass the prize pig barn. She keeps holding eye contact when they talk, no quick glances away, no awkward fidgeting, like she’s daring him to admit he remembers that night on the lake house dock, when they’d sat up talking until 2 a.m., so close their knees were touching, and he’d almost kissed her before his then-fiancee yelled for him from the porch.
They stop at the ferris wheel when the sun starts to sink below the tree line, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the country band off to the side playing a slow George Strait deep cut that makes his chest ache a little. They sit on a splintered wooden bench, cotton candy sticking to her fingertips, and she shifts closer until her knee is pressed solidly against his, warm through both their jeans. “My husband died two years ago,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear it over the noise of the fair. “I moved back here last month. Asked around about you.”
He’s spent 37 years fighting this, pushing down every thought of her, berating himself for being disloyal even when his marriage was already falling apart, even when his ex-wife was spending more time in Boca than at their house. The conflict melts away fast, all that resistance turning to something soft and bright when she tilts her chin up at him, like she already knows what he’s going to say. “I always thought you picked the wrong cousin, Elroy,” she says, so quiet it’s almost a whisper.
He doesn’t hesitate this time. He cups her jaw, calloused fingers brushing the silver streak at her temple, and kisses her, slow and soft at first, then a little firmer when she threads her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. No one pays them any mind, just two older people on a bench, the ferris wheel turning slow behind them, kids yelling as they win stuffed bears at the ring toss booth.
They talk for another hour after that, swapping stories about the years they missed, her complaining about how boring suburban Ohio was, him complaining about the guy who brought in a 1972 Winnebago that had been used as a chicken coop for 15 years. When she says she has to head home, he walks her to her beat up Subaru Outback, the back stacked with potted succulents and a dog crate for her golden retriever. She scribbles her phone number on the back of a fried Oreo receipt, shoves it in the pocket of his flannel, and squeezes his hand before she climbs in the driver’s seat.
He stands in the gravel parking lot long after her taillights disappear around the curve of the road, the receipt crinkling under his fingers where he’s pressed his hand into his pocket, the faint taste of vanilla lip balm still on his mouth. He pulls the half-smoked menthol from behind his ear, lights it, and shakes his head, amused at how easily he’d let go of the grudge he’d carried against the entire world for almost a decade. A kid runs past him, holding a giant stuffed teddy bear twice his size, yelling for his mom to wait up.
