Moe Sorrentino, 52, has spent the last seven years covered in brass polish and clock oil, restoring vintage timepieces out of the sun-faded brick shop he owns on Portland’s northeast side. His only consistent social interaction is dropping his 22-year-old daughter off at her barista shifts, and his biggest flaw is that he’s convinced any romantic interest at his age is the kind of foolishness that gets your heart broken for no good reason. He only agreed to come to the neighborhood block party because his daughter threatened to cut off his supply of her homemade sausage lasagna if he spent another summer night locked in his shop alone.
He’s leaning against the thick bark of a silver maple, half-empty Pabst in one hand, a faint smudge of brass polish he missed when washing up still streaked along his left jaw, when she walks over. He’s only ever waved at Lena from across the street before, the 48-year-old who moved into the blue bungalow three doors down three months prior, runs a mobile used book shop out of a converted pastel blue van. She’s holding a crinkly paper plate stacked with peach cobbler, wears cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour tee, a sunflower tucked behind one ear, barefoot, soles dusted with grass clippings. The air smells like grilled brats, citronella, and cut clover, neighbor chatter mixing with the twang of a country playlist playing off a portable speaker by the grill.
She stops a foot away, and he tenses up, half-ready to mumble an excuse about having a clock to fix and bolt. Instead, she nods at the faded clock face patch sewn onto the breast of his work flannel, even though it’s 78 degrees out and he’s already sweating through the collar. “Heard you’re the guy who fixes things that stop ticking,” she says, grinning, teeth white against her sun-kissed skin. He’s so flustered he nearly drops his beer. She mentions the 1920s grandfather clock her mom left her, the one that stopped chiming two weeks after she moved in, and he offers to come look at it for free before he can think better of it.
A group of teens carrying coolers brushes past them, and she steps closer to avoid getting knocked, her shoulder pressing solid against his bicep. He can smell coconut sunscreen and ripe peach on her, and when she laughs at his dumb joke about how clocks have way less drama than people, her breath brushes the side of his neck. He’s torn so sharply he almost feels it physically: one half of him is screaming to go home, lock the shop door, go back to the quiet, predictable world where he doesn’t have to feel this jittery, this 16-year-old nervous around a pretty girl. The other half wants to stay right there, feel the heat of her arm through his flannel, listen to her talk about the beat-up poetry collections she keeps in the back of her van for people who can’t afford to pay full price.
She tilts her head when she notices the smudge on his jaw, and before he can react, she reaches up, her thumb brushing softly across his skin to wipe it away. Her fingers are warm, calloused at the tips from turning book pages, and he freezes, eyes locked on hers. No one’s touched him like that, soft and casual and interested, since his ex-wife moved out. He can hear the pop of a beer can ten feet away, the yelp of a kid chasing a golden retriever across the lawn, and they’re standing so close now he can see flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.
The first firework booms overhead before either of them can say anything, painting the sky bright red, and everyone around them turns their faces up to watch. She turns to him at the exact same second he turns to her, their noses almost brushing, and for once he doesn’t overthink it. He leans in, kisses her soft, and she tastes like peach cobbler and lime seltzer, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the short graying hair at his nape. The sunflower falls out of her hair, landing on the toe of his scuffed work boot, and no one notices, every other person on the block staring up at the bursts of blue and purple lighting up the darkening sky.
When the last firework fades, the crowd cheering loud enough to make his ears ring, she bends down to pick up the sunflower, tucking it behind his ear instead of her own. They walk back down the block side by side, their hands brushing every few steps, and when they stop at her front porch, she tells him she’ll have cold peach iced tea waiting for him when he comes over at 10 the next morning to look at her clock. He nods, too flustered to do much else, and walks the three doors down to his own house.
He fumbles with his front door key, steps inside, and glances at the mirror hung by the entryway. The sunflower is still tucked behind his ear, its bright yellow petals a sharp contrast to his graying hair, and the smudge of brass polish is long gone from his jaw. He reaches up, touches the soft edge of the petal, and doesn’t even realize he’s smiling until his cheeks start to ache.
