He’s half-watching a guy attempt to win a giant stuffed bear for his date when a woman in a flowy ivory linen sundress stumbles two feet away from him, her strappy sandal catching on a loose plank of the fairground’s wooden walkway. He reacts before he thinks, reaching out to curl his calloused fingers around her elbow to steady her. Her skin is warm, softer than he expects, and when she tilts her head up to thank him, he recognizes her immediately. Lila Hale. 58, ex-wife of his high school principal, the woman he’d nursed a mortifying, all-consuming crush on his entire senior year, back when she was 24 and married and so far out of his league he’d never even dared say more than two words to her.
She blinks, then grins, a faint smudge of pink lemonade on her lower lip. “Marlon Voss, right? The kid who carved that walnut chess set that sat in Richard’s office for 20 years?” He laughs, surprised she remembers, lets go of her elbow slowly, like he’s handling one of his vintage cue shafts. She’s got sun freckles across her nose now, streaks of silver in the dark hair she’s pulled back in a loose braid, and she smells like lavender hand cream and the sour watermelon candy she’s got tucked in her canvas tote bag. She gestures to the empty spot across from him at the picnic table, and he nods before he can overthink it.
They talk first about the fair, then about the last 40 years. She says she divorced Richard three years prior, caught him cheating with the school’s new administrative assistant, moved back to town last year to be close to her 7-year-old granddaughter, who draws constellations on every scrap of paper she can find. He tells her about retiring from teaching three years back, the cue restoration business he runs out of his garage, his ex-wife leaving eight years prior for a traveling RV sales rep who collected vintage license plates. He’s hyper aware of every tiny point of contact: their knees brush under the table when she shifts to grab a napkin to wipe lemonade off her wrist, neither of them pulls away. She asks about the custom cue he’s got tucked in the leather case propped against the table leg, so he pulls it out, shows her the hand-tooled leather wrap he spent three weeks on, the oak inlay he used to fix a crack in the butt. When she runs her index finger over the embossed oak leaf pattern, her knuckle brushes his, and he feels a jolt go up his arm that he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking glances at her through the principal’s office window. He’s torn, half horrified that the old, forbidden crush is still so bright, half giddy that she’s leaning in, asking questions, laughing at his dumb jokes about the kids who used to glue hammers to the workbenches in his shop class. For 44 years, he’d written off any interest in her as a silly teenage fantasy, something he should be embarrassed by, like the AC/DC posters he still has taped to the inside of his garage door.
When the band slows down to a syrupy cover of Amazed, she leans forward, her forearms resting on the table close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off her skin. “You know, I used to look forward to you dropping things off at the office,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear over the crowd noise. “Richard thought you were just a troublemaker who forgot his permission slips every other week, but I knew you were making excuses to stop by.” He freezes, then laughs, shaking his head. He admits he did, that he’d carried that crush for years, never told a soul, felt stupid for it even now. She tilts her head, her eyes dark and warm, and rests her hand on top of his where it’s sitting on the table next to the cue. “Stupid? I thought you were the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I was married, though. Couldn’t say a word.” The old, stupid taboo hums in the back of his head—this is your principal’s wife, you don’t do this—but it’s quieter than the roar of his blood in his ears, quieter than the way his chest feels tight like he’s 18 again, about to ask the prettiest girl in school to prom.
He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t let that rigid old rule he’s carried for decades win. He asks her if she wants to skip the fair’s overpriced, burnt barbecue and get meatloaf and peach pie at the diner downtown, the one that’s been open since they were both kids, that still serves coffee in thick ceramic mugs that don’t break if you drop them. She grins, says yes, and stands up, slipping her hand into his when he offers it to help her over the loose plank that tripped her earlier. Her palm fits perfectly against his calloused one, and when they walk toward the fair exit, the sound of the band fades behind them, the sweet smell of fried Oreos replaced by the faint lavender of her hand cream. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t waste time feeling guilty for the crush he carried for decades, just squeezes her hand a little tighter as they cross the street toward the diner’s neon sign glowing in the dusk.
