Ray Voss, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller at Cleveland Hopkins International before he retired four years prior. His defining flaw, per his older sister, was that he’d turned “emotionally hermetic” after his wife Elaine died of ovarian cancer in 2015. He’d stopped going to holiday parties, turned down golf outings with his old crew, even avoided the local diner on weekends because he didn’t want to make small talk with people who’d ask how he was holding up. The only reason he was manning the brat grill at the town’s Fourth of July beer tent was his 17-year-old niece had blackmailed him, threatening to post the 1982 polaroid of him in a perm and cutoff jean shorts on the town Facebook group if he bailed.
The air reeked of charred sauerkraut, cheap light beer, and citronella candles that did almost nothing to keep the mosquitos away. A cover band on the small stage was growling through “Jack & Diane”, the bass thrumming so loud Ray could feel it in the fillings in his back teeth. He wiped a streak of grease off his flannel sleeve with a crumpled paper towel, turning to tell the next person in line their brat was done, when he almost collided with a woman holding a sweating plastic cup of iced peach tea.
A splash of tea hit the toe of his scuffed work boot. She laughed, a low, warm sound he recognized before he even looked at her face. Marnie Hale, 58, owned the used bookshop on Main Street, the younger sister of his high school girlfriend Linda, who’d left town for a marketing job in Miami in 1983 and never looked back. Ray had carried a stupid, guilty crush on Marnie the whole two years he dated Linda, had even skipped their senior prom afterparty because he’d caught himself staring at her legs in her prom dress too long, convinced he was the worst kind of traitor.
She leaned in before he could say anything, dabbing at the tea stain on his boot with a frayed cloth napkin she pulled from her jeans pocket. Her shoulder brushed his forearm, and he caught the scent of lavender lotion and lemon Pledge, the same smell that clung to the stacks of vintage paperbacks in her shop. When she stood up, she didn’t step back, holding his gaze for three full beats longer than polite casual conversation allowed, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a grin. “You still have that scar over your left eyebrow,” she said, nodding at the faint silver line he’d gotten crashing his dirt bike behind the old drive-in in 1979. “I was the one who handed you the bandana that day, remember? Linda was too busy yelling at you for being an idiot to help.”
Ray froze, half ready to mumble an excuse and leave, to grab his jacket and head home to the rhubarb pie he’d baked that morning, the routine he’d clung to for almost a decade. That old guilt twisted in his gut first, the same voice that told him any kind of fun, any kind of interest in someone else, was a betrayal of Elaine, was a betrayal of the promise he’d made Linda back in 1981 that he’d never look at her little sister that way. But then Marnie laughed again, swatting a mosquito off her arm, and he remembered Linda had called him last month, gushing about her first grandbaby, asking if he’d finally stopped moping and gone on a date. He remembered Elaine’s last words to him, quiet in her hospital bed, telling him he didn’t get to spend the rest of his life being lonely just because she had to leave early.
The first firework went off overhead, painting the sky neon pink, and a group of drunk teens in flag print tank tops barreled past, yelling so loud Ray had to lean in to hear her. Marnie stepped closer to avoid being knocked over, her hip pressing solid against his, the denim of her jeans warm through his thin work pants. She tilted her chin up to look at him, the flashes of red and blue light catching the silver strands in her dark hair, and he realized she wasn’t wearing any makeup, just a smudge of chapstick that looked like cherry. “I’ve been trying to run into you for six months,” she said, loud enough only he could hear, not looking away. “I saw you fixing your porch rail back in January, when I was walking my golden retriever. You waved, and then you ran back inside before I could come say hi.”
Ray’s chest felt light, like the weight he’d been carrying around for eight years had just slipped off his shoulders for the first time. He didn’t feel guilty. He didn’t feel like he was doing something wrong. He just felt… curious, the same buzz he used to get when he was 19 and about to ask a girl out to the drive-in, the same thrill of a small, safe risk. He gestured toward the exit of the tent, nodding at the sidewalk that led to his small ranch house three blocks away. “I got a rhubarb pie cooling on my kitchen counter,” he said. “Got vanilla ice cream in the freezer, too. I make it from scratch, the old recipe Elaine’s mom gave me. You wanna come try it?”
Marnie smiled, squeezing his wrist lightly, her calloused fingers (from turning book pages for 20 years, he realized) warm against his skin. She didn’t let go right away, just held on for a second, while another firework exploded overhead, the crowd cheering around them. “I’d like that a lot,” she said. They walked out of the tent together, stepping over crumpled beer cans and discarded glow sticks, the sound of the band fading behind them as they turned down the quiet residential street. Her hand brushed his every few steps, their shoulders bumping softly as they walked, the warm summer air carrying the faint smell of cut grass and leftover fireworks smoke.
