Moe Sorrentino, 52, makes his living stripping rust out of rotting vintage campers and reupholstering their cracked vinyl benches, so he’s used to being alone for 10 hour stretches, no conversation required beyond the classic rock playing on his shop radio. He’s avoided every local community event since his wife left him for a traveling solar panel salesman eight years prior, convinced small talk with neighbors only leads to prying questions about his empty house, his empty passenger seat, his general lack of anything that looks like a social life. He only showed up to the fire department’s annual Fourth of July cookout because the chief had towed a waterlogged 1972 Airstream out of a ditch for him for free back in May, and he owed a favor.
He’s leaned up against the dented steel beer cooler at the edge of the parking lot, picking burnt edges off a slice of brisket that’s dripped barbecue sauce down his work jeans, when she steps up beside him. He recognizes her immediately as the woman who moved into the butter-yellow cottage two doors down three weeks prior, the one he’s seen sitting on her front porch at dusk painting watercolors of the oak trees that line the street, bare feet propped up on the railing. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour tee, streaks of pale blue paint crusted under her fingernails, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the charcoal smoke drifting over from the grills. She reaches into the cooler for a cherry lime seltzer at the exact same time he reaches for another IPA, their knuckles brushing hard enough that he drops the half-eaten brisket off his plate onto the grass.
He flushes, mumbles an apology, and she laughs, the sound light and rough around the edges, like she’s spent the last week yelling over a paint sprayer. She says she’s been meaning to knock on his door for days, ever since she spotted the half-restored Airstream parked in his driveway—her dad had the exact same model when she was a kid, they spent every summer driving up to the Great Lakes in it. He’s wary at first, the same little twist of disgust in his gut he gets every time someone shows interest in something he does, convinced she’s just angling for free repair work on something, but she doesn’t ask for favors. She just talks, leaning against the cooler beside him, her shoulder brushing his bicep every time someone walks past and she shifts out of the way, holding eye contact so long he has to glance away every few seconds just to make sure he’s not imagining the way her smile lingers when he tells a dumb joke about the previous owner of the Airstream letting his pet skunk pee all over the cabinetry.
When the sun dips below the tree line and the fireworks start, the whole crowd moves to the open field behind the fire station. It’s crowded, so they end up pressed shoulder to shoulder, her bare arm warm against his through the thin cotton of his work shirt. The first big red firework bursts directly overhead with a boom that shakes the ground under their boots, and she jumps, grabbing his forearm hard enough that her nails dig a little into his skin through the fabric. She doesn’t let go right away, even after she laughs and says she’s always been jumpy around loud noises, ever since her older brother stuffed a firecracker in her Barbie dream house when she was seven. He doesn’t pull away. He’s spent eight years telling himself he’s better off alone, that any kind of casual connection is just a setup for disappointment, but right then all he can focus on is the weight of her hand on his arm, the way she points at a burst of purple fireworks and says that’s the exact color she painted her kitchen accent wall last weekend, the faint taste of cherry seltzer on the air when she leans in to yell over the noise of the crowd.
After the last firework fades and people start packing up their coolers and herding their cranky kids to their cars, he offers to walk her to her beat up Subaru parked at the far end of the lot. She stops at the driver’s side door, twisting the key ring around her finger, and says she baked lemon bars that morning, if he wants to come over tomorrow to try them. She adds that she just bought a beat up 1998 pop up camper off Facebook Marketplace, has no clue how to patch the small rust spot along the bottom edge, and she’d pay him, obviously, no free labor expected. He nods before he can overthink it, says he’ll bring his wire brush and a six pack of the hazy IPA he likes, no charge for the first hour of work. She grins, leans in, and presses a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, the coconut scent of her sunscreen clinging to his skin long after she pulls away. She climbs into her car, rolls down the window, and waves as she pulls out of the parking lot. He stands there for a minute, holding his half-empty beer in one hand, pressing the fingers of his other to the warm spot on his cheek where her lips had been, the faint pop of leftover firecrackers popping off in the field behind him.
