Rafe Marquez, 59, had spent the last hour pretending he wasn’t miserable at the Eugene summer food truck rally. His buddy Mike had begged him to bring his award-winning 1972 Airstream Sovereign for the vintage camper pop-up, then bailed 20 minutes after they arrived to flirt with the woman running the loaded fry truck. Rafe leaned against the Airstream’s cool polished aluminum, condensation from his hazy IPA dripping onto the scuffed leather of his work boots, and considered packing up early. The crowd was too loud, too full of couples holding hands, too many people he’d known for 30 years who’d still side-eye him for being the guy Carol left. He’d built his vintage travel trailer restoration business from scratch after leaving the Air Force, had put 20 years into a marriage that ended when his wife ran off with a 32-year-old craft brewery owner, and had spent the 12 years since clinging to a stupid, misplaced sense of loyalty to the life they’d had, even if she’d thrown it away first. That meant avoiding anyone Carol had ever badmouthed, which cut out roughly half the people within a 20-mile radius, and left him spending most nights alone with his golden retriever, Max, watching old Westerns in his shop.
He caught a whiff of lavender body wash and coconut sunscreen before he heard her voice. “That custom welded hitch you posted about? Even better in person.” He turned, and there was Lila Hart, Carol’s cousin, the woman his ex had forbidden him from talking to for the last 15 years of their marriage. She was 47, sun-freckled across her nose, cutoff jean shorts riding high on her hips, a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour tee hanging loose off one shoulder, an elote cup in one hand, cheese crumbs dusting her thumb. Rafe froze. He’d always thought she was beautiful, back when she’d show up to family cookouts, loud and laughing, while Carol rolled her eyes and called her reckless, said she was a bad influence.
She stepped closer, craning her neck to look at the Airstream’s custom awning brackets, and her bare shoulder brushed his bicep through the thin cotton of his gray work shirt. He could feel the heat of her skin through the fabric, his throat going dry. “Carol always said you were useless with anything that required a drill,” she said, grinning, holding his gaze for three beats longer than polite, like she knew exactly what she was doing. Rafe’s jaw tightened. The old instinct flared first, the one that made him defend Carol even when she was wrong, even when she’d lied to him for years. But then he remembered she’d left him for a guy who’d never held a power tool in his life, who made a living selling $18 hazy IPAs named after stoner memes, and he huffed a laugh. “Carol said a lot of shit that wasn’t true.”
They talked for 40 minutes, leaning side by side against the Airstream, their knees brushing every time she shifted her weight to take a bite of elote. She told him she’d been following his restoration work on Facebook for three years, had even sent him a message once asking about fixing up her grandmother’s 1965 Shasta, but never hit send because she thought he’d block her. He told her he’d turned down a six-figure job restoring a fleet of vintage trailers for a California glamping company earlier that year, because he didn’t want to hire employees, didn’t want to lose the quiet of working alone in his shop, sanding wood and welding metal with no one hovering over his shoulder. She wiped a smudge of elote cheese off his jaw with her thumb, held it there for half a second before licking the cheese off her own thumb, and Rafe’s blood ran so hot he thought his beer might warm up in his hand. He was torn, half desperate to lean in and kiss her, half sick with the old guilt, the voice in his head saying this is wrong, this is Carol’s family, everyone will talk.
That’s when she told him the truth. “I told Carol she was an idiot in 2018,” she said, voice softening, no grin now. “I caught her making out with that brewery guy at the country club pool. Told her either she told you, or I would. She told everyone I was trying to break up her marriage, spread that rumor I slept with her friend’s husband. Cut me off entirely.” Rafe’s chest went tight. He’d found out about the cheating two years later, when Carol packed her bags and left in the middle of a Tuesday while he was at a parts run. He’d always wondered why Lila had stopped showing up to holidays, why everyone in Carol’s family talked about her like she was a pariah. The last 15 years of misplaced loyalty, the guilt he’d felt every time he’d thought about her, the loneliness he’d carried because he’d let Carol dictate who he could talk to? It all crumbled in two seconds.
He nodded at the Airstream’s door, the one with the custom oak handle he’d carved himself during a rainy weekend the previous winter. “Wanna see the walnut counter I built for the kitchen inside? Took me three weeks, sanded it by hand every night after work.” She smiled, slow and warm, and brushed her hand against his when she stepped past him to climb the steps. Rafe followed her in, reached behind him to click the door shut, and turned the deadbolt.
