Arlo Mendez, 61, has restored 72 vintage travel trailers in the eight years since his wife died, and he has never once brought one to the annual coastal Oregon rally 20 minutes outside his small town. He hates the crowds, the nosy neighbors asking if he’s “finally ready to start dating again,” the way everyone feels entitled to comment on his grief. His childhood best friend talked him into it this year, though; the 1962 Airstream he’d spent 11 months refinishing for a client up in Portland was too perfect not to show, so he’d dragged it out at 6 a.m. that morning, still smudged with aluminum polish under his fingernails, and set up camp at the far edge of the field, as far from the cornhole tournaments and potluck tables as he could get.
It’s golden hour when she walks over, the low sun gilding the pine tops, crickets just starting their hum over the faint Merle Haggard drifting from a 1950s canned ham trailer three spots over. She’s holding two frosted glasses of cloudy orange wine, cutoff denim shorts showing off freckled calves scuffed at the ankle from worn white cowboy boots, a silver concho belt slung low on her hips. “My aunt’s the one who paid you to overhaul that Airstream,” she says, leaning against the polished aluminum siding next to him, close enough that he can smell the citrus of her sunscreen and the pine stuck in her wavy auburn hair. Their elbows brush when she hands him the glass, and he flinches a little, unused to casual, intentional touch from anyone who isn’t a guy dropping off a rusted trailer frame.
He sniffs the wine first, teases her about serving “hippie Sunny D” and she laughs, loud and bright, and rests her hand on his forearm for three full beats, the callus on her palm from yanking wine corks all day rough against the frayed cuff of his Carhartt work shirt. She tells him she runs the pop-up natural wine bar at the rally, just got divorced six months prior from a corporate lawyer who thought camping was “a punishment for poor people,” and she’s been driving her beat-up 1978 Scotty Sportsman up and down the West Coast working festival bar shifts ever since. He tells her about the first trailer he ever restored, the beat-up 1968 Shasta he and his wife bought for $400 their first year of marriage, and he doesn’t even mind when her knee bumps his when she leans in to ask follow-up questions.
For 45 minutes they trade stories, and Arlo can feel the wall he’s built around himself for eight years starting to crumble, a weird, warm flutter in his chest he’d forgotten existed. Half of him is screaming to make an excuse, go back to his pickup, drive home to his empty workshop where no one can bother him, where no one will talk about how “Arlo Mendez was spotted flirting with the wine lady” at the grocery store next week. The other half can’t stop staring at the fleck of gold in her left eye, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s listening, the way she keeps shifting closer like she doesn’t care if their shoulders touch.
“Wanna see my Scotty?” she asks when the sun dips below the treeline, fairy lights strung between the trailers flickering on all down the row, kids yelling as they chase fireflies across the grass. She doesn’t wait for an answer, just stands, holds out her hand, and he stares at it for two full seconds before he takes it, her palm warm and calloused against his, the grease under his nails rubbing off a little on her skin. She leads him down the row, the music softening to slow Patsy Cline, the air cool enough that he can see his breath when he exhales.
When they get to her Scotty, she stops on the small wooden step, turns to face him, their faces six inches apart, and she doesn’t step back. She lifts her free hand, brushes a fleck of pine needle off the collar of his flannel, her fingers grazing the edge of his jaw, and he doesn’t flinch this time. He leans down, kisses her slow, the peach from the wine sharp on her tongue, the cool of her silver rings seeping into the skin at the back of his neck when she tangles her fingers in his short graying hair. He doesn’t think about the gossip, doesn’t think about the eight years of loneliness, doesn’t think about the list of trailer repairs he has waiting for him on Monday.
She pulls back first, grinning, the corners of her mouth sticky with gloss, and tugs him up the step into the Scotty. The screen door clicks shut behind them, cutting off the sound of the crickets and the distant music.
