Delmar Hanks, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the splintered edge of a county park picnic table and twisted the cap off his second Pabst Blue Ribbon. He’d already checked his watch six times in the 47 minutes he’d been at the annual fire department cookout, and his only ride, Gary, had wandered off 20 minutes prior to hit on the new clerk at the post office, leaving Delmar to watch a group of teen boys trash talk each other over a cornhole board. The air smelled like charred bratwurst, citronella candles, and cut grass, the hum of conversation layered over the high shriek of kids bouncing on the inflatable obstacle course near the tree line. He was 10 seconds from bailing and driving his beat-up F150 back to his quiet cabin on the edge of town when the corner of a cardboard box smacked into his left bicep.
The woman carrying it stumbled, her hip brushing his as she fumbled to keep the stack of used books inside from tipping. A dog-eared paperback copy of Lonesome Dove slid free and hit the toe of his work boot, and he bent to grab it before it could land in a puddle of spilled lemonade. When he straightened, his fingers brushed hers as he passed it over, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the static he’d been getting from the wool flannel he’d worn against the evening chill. Her name was Marisol, she said, 58, the new part-time librarian at the town’s tiny branch, here selling donated books to raise money for the summer reading program. She had hazel eyes flecked with gold, silver hoop earrings that caught the late afternoon sun, and a streak of electric blue in her graying dark hair that she’d tucked behind one ear. She smelled like lavender and lemon polish, and when she laughed at his offhand joke about the cornhole boys taking the game way too seriously, it was warm and rough, like she spent half her time yelling over noisy kids and bad PA systems.
He’d spent the last seven years deliberately shutting down any even faintly romantic advance, disgusted at the idea of replacing Elaine, his wife of 32 years who’d passed from ovarian cancer in 2016, convinced that letting anyone new close would only end with more empty space in his house and more weight in his chest. But Marisol didn’t flirt like the women at church potlucks who brought him casseroles and asked if he needed help with laundry. She asked about the faint scar across his knuckle, and when he said he got it from a kid who’d tried to use a table saw without goggles back in 2019, she held up her own left hand to show a matching scar along her thumb, from a time she’d sliced herself re-binding a first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird. She teased him about the sawdust still crusted under his fingernails, even though he’d been retired for two years, and he found himself rambling about the birdhouse carving side business he’d started last spring, something he hadn’t told anyone but Gary.
He kept waiting for the awkward lull, the moment he’d have to make an excuse to leave, but it never came. She told him about her ex-husband, who’d left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor in Tucson, and how she’d moved to Oregon to get as far away from that whole mess as possible. When a group of firemen walked by with a tray of freshly grilled brats, she grabbed two, handed him one without asking, and didn’t even flinch when he got mustard on the cuff of his flannel. He fought the pull in his chest the whole time, half of him screaming that he was being disloyal, that he should grab his keys and go home to his quiet porch and his old Westerns, the other half leaning in closer, drinking in the sound of her laugh, the way she gestured with her hands when she talked about her favorite authors, the warmth of her shoulder when it brushed his as they watched a fire dog drag a kid across the grass by the hem of his t-shirt.
The sun dipped below the tree line when the book booth shut down, and she wiped her hands on the thighs of her worn denim jeans, twisted one of her hoop earrings like she was nervous, and asked if he wanted to head to the diner down the road for a milkshake. He froze for three full seconds, half a dozen excuses on the tip of his tongue: he had wood to split in the morning, his old hound dog was home alone, he had an early doctor’s appointment. None of them came out. He nodded instead, and when she grinned and tucked her tote bag over her shoulder, he held out his arm to help her step over a low rope fence strung between two oak trees.
They sat in a cracked vinyl booth at the back of the diner, split a vanilla milkshake with two straws, and argued about whether the Lonesome Dove miniseries did the book justice. When she reached across the table to dab a dollop of whipped cream off his upper lip with her thumb, he didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, just held her gaze for a beat longer than he should have. He glanced down at the tote bag slung over the seat next to her, and spotted the frayed cuff of a pair of leather work gloves, the exact same brand he used for carving, peeking out over the top.
