Rayford “Ray” Crockett, 61, made his living restoring antique typewriters out of the converted garage behind his small Ohio ranch, a career he’d fallen into after his wife left him twelve years prior for a 29-year-old roofing contractor with a motorcycle and zero sense of long-term financial responsibility. His biggest flaw, as his only close friend Ted never tired of pointing out, was that he’d built a brick wall around himself so thick he couldn’t even see when someone was trying to climb over it. He’d avoided every local festival, mixer, and community cookout for a decade, only showing up to the harvest fair beer tent that night because Ted had bribed him with a free case of the local hazy IPA he hoarded like gold.
He was nursing his second pint, half-watching a group of college kids make a mess of the cornhole tournament, when the plastic bench across from him scraped against the packed dirt and someone sat down. He looked up, and for half a second he thought he was seeing a ghost: Lila Marlow, his ex-wife’s niece, the last time he’d seen her she was 30, wearing a black dress at her grandma’s funeral, red-eyed and squeezing his hand like he was the only person in the room who wasn’t fighting over her grandma’s silverware. She was 42 now, her dark hair streaked with a single silver strand at the temple, wearing a faded green flannel, scuffed work boots, and jeans with a hole at the knee, her forearms freckled dark from months working outside as a forest ranger, the job she’d held in Oregon until she moved back three weeks prior to care for her dad, who’d suffered a mild stroke.
The first five minutes were awkward, small talk about the harvest, the terrible 90s cover band blaring from the stage, the way the IPA tasted better this year than last. Then she leaned in, her knee bumping his under the wobbly plastic table, to yell over a particularly loud rendition of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” that she’d been trying to find someone to fix her grandma’s old Royal typewriter, the one she’d kept in her closet for years, the one she remembered him fixing once when she was a teen. He could smell cedar and pine soap on her, the faint vanilla of her lip balm, and when she reached for her seltzer can her forearm brushed his, calloused from swinging axes and hauling trail gear, warm even through the thick fabric of his Carhartt jacket.
His chest tightened. He knew this was wrong, on paper at least. She was his ex-wife’s niece, 19 years younger than him, everyone in this tiny town would gossip so loud it’d reach his ex in Florida before the end of the week. He’d not so much as held another person’s hand since his wife left, part of him still carrying the dumb, heavy shame of not being enough, part of him disgusted that he was even noticing how her smile crinkled the corners of her hazel eyes, how she kept holding eye contact longer than you would a casual acquaintance, how she laughed so hard at his dumb joke about the cornhole kid who kept tripping over his own feet that she snort-laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed.
That’s when the wall cracked. All the stupid fear of what people would say, all the guilt he’d carried for twelve years, all the stubborn refusal to let anyone get close, it all melted like snow off a sun-warmed fence post. He told her he’d be at her grandma’s old cottage, the one with the chipped blue porch swing he’d helped build 15 years prior, at 10 a.m. the next day, he’d bring his tool kit and a six pack of that IPA she said she liked. She grinned, the corners of her mouth turning up so wide her cheeks dimpled, and when she stood up to leave to meet her dad by the pie stand she squeezed his shoulder, her hand lingering for a full two seconds before she pulled away.
He sat there for another hour, finishing his third pint, watching the sun dip below the cornfields on the edge of the fairgrounds, smiling to himself when she waved at him from across the tent before she climbed into her dad’s beat-up pickup. He pulled the crumpled paper napkin she’d scribbled her cottage address on out from under his empty beer can, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his Carhartt, right next to the photo of his late dog he kept there.
For the first time in twelve years, he didn’t dread waking up early the next day.
