Moe Sorrentino, 53, vintage camper restorer, has spent the better part of the last seven years actively avoiding Madison County’s community events. He’d moved to the holler outside Mars Hill after his ex-wife took the house, the dog, and half his retirement to move to Florida with a golf pro, and he’d learned fast that small town gossip travels faster than wildfire in a dry summer. He’d only showed up to the fire department chili cook-off that Saturday because his biggest client, a retired teacher who’d commissioned a full overhaul of her 1968 Winnebago, had begged him to enter his award-winning venison chili, and he didn’t want to risk losing the $12,000 check he was due when he handed over the keys the next week. He was leaning against a wooden support pole at the back of the tent, half-finished bowl in one hand, crumpled napkin in the other, mentally mapping the fastest route out to his pickup when he smelled peaches and coconut shampoo.
She was standing less than a foot away, wearing a faded denim jacket and boots caked in the same red clay that dusted the floor of his shop, holding a paper plate stacked high with cornbread. He recognized her immediately: Lila, the woman who’d bought the run-down cottage a quarter mile down the road from his barn three weeks prior, who’d left a jar of homemade peach jam on his front porch the Sunday before with a handwritten note that said “for the guy who fixed my flat tire when I got stuck in the ditch last month.” He’d never knocked to thank her, had told himself he was too busy sanding Airstream panels, but really he’d been scared of what the old biddies at the post office would say if they saw him going into a single woman’s house before she’d even lived in town a month.
She smiled, and the corner of her mouth curled up higher on one side, a little crooked, and he felt his chest go tight like he’d forgotten how to breathe. “I tried your chili,” she said, leaning in a little so he could hear her over the roar of the crowd and the country band playing off to the side. Her shoulder brushed his bicep when a group of firefighters squeezed past them carrying a case of beer, and the warmth of it seeped through the worn flannel he was wearing, lingered even after they were gone. “Won first place, by the way. The chief just announced it. You were too busy pretending you wanted to be anywhere else to notice.” He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years, and when he dropped his napkin on the ground she bent to pick it up at the same time he did, their hands brushing, her skin softer than he expected, calloused a little at the fingertips like she worked with her hands too.
The voice in the back of his head screamed warnings, the same one that had kept him locked in his barn 12 hours a day for years, telling him every person in that tent was watching, that by Monday the whole town would be chattering about Moe Sorrentino hitting on the new widow, that he’d be labeled the town creep before he even knew her last name. He hated that voice, hated that 8 years of loneliness had turned him into the kind of guy who was scared to say hello to a pretty woman who’d been nice to him, hated the way his skin was buzzing like he was 16 again working up the nerve to ask a girl to prom.
When she asked him if he wanted to get out of there, he didn’t even hesitate. He tossed his half-eaten chili in the trash can by the pole, nodded, and followed her out of the tent, ignoring the raised eyebrows and little smirks from the people he passed on the way out. The air outside was cool, sharp with the smell of pine and wood smoke from the bonfire the fire department had lit by the parking lot, and the moon was bright enough that he could see the freckles across her nose when she turned to look at him. “You said you restore campers, right?” she said, kicking a loose rock across the gravel. “I saw that silver 1972 Airstream parked behind your barn the other day when I was walking my rescue hound. Can you show it to me?”
He led her down the rutted dirt road to his property, their boots crunching over fallen oak leaves, neither of them talking the whole walk, but every few seconds their hands would brush, and neither of them pulled away. The Airstream was lit up with the string of warm fairy lights he’d strung up inside for the Winnebago client, who’d said she wanted to copy the look for her own rig, and when he opened the door the glow spilled out across the dewy grass. She stepped inside first, running her hand along the reclaimed cedar countertop he’d milled himself from a fallen oak on his property, and when she turned to face him she was so close he could smell that peach and coconut shampoo again, sharp and sweet.
He didn’t overthink it, didn’t listen to the voice in his head warning him about gossip or heartbreak or all the ways this could blow up in his face. He leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed him back, her hands tangling in the graying hair at the back of his head, the jar of her peach jam he’d grabbed from his kitchen counter that morning to bring to the cook-off sitting unopened on the Airstream’s dinette table a foot away from them. Outside, the distant sound of the country band playing their final slow set drifted through the open screen door, and neither of them moved to shut it.
