Moe Pritchard, 62, spent 38 years running the small family sawmill outside Silverton, Oregon before selling it after his wife Linda died four years prior. His biggest flaw, one Linda used to tease him about until the day she got sick, was that he’d rather dig his heels in and be wrong than admit anyone else had a good point. He’d avoided every public town event since the funeral, sick of the pitying head tilts and generic “let me know if you need anything” lines, but his old mill crew had shown up on his porch at 10 a.m. with a cooler of beer and a threat to haul him to Timber Days by his work boots if he refused, so he’d caved.
He was leaning against the splintered split-rail fence surrounding the pop-up beer garden, nursing a cold IPA that bit the back of his throat just right, when the collision happened. He’d been half watching a group of teens race lawnmowers across the field, sun warm on his scarred forearms, when a woman tripped over a loose fence post at his feet, her frozen lemonade sloshing a cold streak down the front of his faded gray flannel. Her hand fisted around his bicep to steady herself, her palm cool from the frosty plastic cup, fingertips calloused in the exact way you only get from turning thousands of book pages. He opened his mouth to snap, then recognized her.
Elara Voss, 58, the new county librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, the same woman who’d read him for filth at the county commissioner meeting three weeks earlier for leaving a fallen old-growth oak rotting on the public land adjacent to his property. She’d worn a long wool skirt and tight bun that day, voice sharp as a mill blade while she listed all the local bird species that would lose nesting spots if he didn’t clear it. Now she was in cutoff denim shorts scuffed at the hem, a faded Tom Petty tee, her wavy auburn hair loose around her shoulders, sunburn high on her cheekbones. She froze too, then laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the bluegrass band’s fast twang. “Of course I trip into the one guy in town who probably wants to throw me in the creek,” she said, dabbing at the lemonade stain on his shirt with a crumpled napkin she pulled from her pocket, her knuckles brushing his chest through the thin fabric.
He should have brushed her off, should have mumbled it was fine and bailed for his truck, but he found himself snorting instead. “Fair. I did spend three days after that meeting complaining about the ‘pushy new librarian’ to my dog.” She grinned, leaning in a little so she could hear him over the crowd’s cheers for the lawnmower race winner, her shoulder brushing his. The air around her smelled like lavender shampoo and lemon rind, no heavy perfume, nothing fake. She offered to buy him a second beer to make up for the shirt, and he agreed, even though he’d already planned on leaving 10 minutes earlier.
They stood against the fence for 40 minutes, talking over the roar of the crowd and the band, so close their arms brushed every time one of them gestured. She didn’t do the pitying head tilt when he mentioned Linda, just nodded slow and said she’d lost her husband to pancreatic cancer three years prior, and she was this close to punching the next person who asked if she was “ready to start dating again” like grief had an expiration date. He found himself telling her he’d left the oak there because Linda used to picnic under it when they were teenagers, and he couldn’t stand to cut it up, and she went quiet for a second, then said she’d pull the public comment if he wanted, she had no idea. He held her gaze longer than he should have, the corner of his mouth tugging up, and said she was right anyway, he could cut it into planks and build picnic tables for the park with it, that would be a better use.
The fireworks show kicked off right then, pink and orange bursts painting the dark sky, the crowd surging forward a little to get a better view. Elara stumbled again, this time pressing fully against his side, her hand resting light on his forearm, no apology this time. She didn’t look up at the fireworks, just at him, her eyes glinting from the bursts of light. “I thought you were kind of hot, even when you were yelling at me at the meeting,” she said, loud enough only he could hear, no trace of embarrassment. “All gruff, calloused hands, acting like you were too tough to listen to a librarian.” He felt his face heat up, a feeling he hadn’t had since he was 17 and asking Linda to prom. He didn’t say anything for a second, just laced his fingers through the hand resting on his arm, her hand small and warm in his, the scar across his palm from a 1998 mill accident catching on her knuckle.
When the last firework faded, the crowd cheering loud enough to rattle the fence posts, she tilted her head toward the street. “My place is three blocks that way,” she said. “I’ve got a bottle of good bourbon on the counter, and I don’t feel like listening to my neighbor’s terrible cover band practice tonight.” He nodded, not bothering to come up with some suave line, just squeezed her hand a little. They walked slow down the dark street, the distant hum of the festival cleanup crew trailing behind them, no awkward silence, no pressure. When they reached her front porch, she tugged him close by the front of his beer-stained flannel and kissed him slow, the distant crickets chirping loud in the oak trees lining the street.
