Arlo Mendez, 57, vintage travel trailer restorer, had spent the last three hours counting the cracks in the 4-H barn’s concrete floor while his 16-year-old niece gossiped with her friends next to her prize Nubian goat. He’d fought coming to the Coconino County Fair for weeks, hated the sticky cotton candy tang in the air, the screaming kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the way every third person stopped him to ask if he could fix their rotting 1972 Scotty camper for half his going rate. When his niece announced she was staying for the goat show awards with her friends, he didn’t even pretend to be disappointed, just slipped out the side door before she could ask him to hold her grooming kit.
He wandered past the carnival rides, hands stuffed in the pockets of his grease-stained flannel, until he hit the homemade pie contest booth at the edge of the food court. The line for samples was three people deep, but the woman behind the table, the one with auburn hair streaked with gray tucked into a faded navy bandana, caught his eye before he could turn away. He knew her: Clara, ran the tiny independent bookstore on Route 66 that stayed open till 9 PM on Wednesdays, the one with the orange tabby that napped on the poetry shelf. He’d never spoken to her, only lingered in the doorway once last winter to get out of a blizzard, too stubborn to walk in and ask for a hot drink.
She waved him over, no hesitation, and he found himself walking toward the booth before his brain could tell him to leave. “You look like you’re one screaming kid away from jumping the fair fence,” she said, grinning, and the corner of her mouth crinkled in a way that made his chest feel tight, the way he’d forgotten it could feel. She slid a paper plate with a sliver of peach pie across the wooden table, and when he reached for it, their fingers brushed. He felt the thin callus on her index finger, the one you get from turning thousands of book pages, and his skin tingled for ten full seconds after he pulled his hand back. The pie was sweet, just a little tangy from fresh lemon zest, and he hummed without thinking.
The woman next to her, the mayor’s wife who’d yelled at him last year for parking his work truck too close to the town square fountain, shot him a sharp look. Clara leaned in, her shoulder pressed warm against his through his flannel, and her breath smelled like cinnamon when she whispered in his ear. “Don’t look too happy, she thinks peach pie is a sin against apple, and she’s holding the tiebreaker vote.” He huffed a laugh, quiet, and she pulled back, her dark eyes holding his for a beat longer than was strictly polite, like she was cataloging every line on his face, every gray hair in his untrimmed beard.
For 8 years, ever since his wife had packed her bags and moved to Portland with a guy who sold artisanal olive oil, Arlo had kept everyone at arm’s length. He’d told himself he liked the quiet, liked spending his days sanding aluminum siding and sealing wood floors alone, liked that he didn’t have to answer to anyone about what he ate for dinner or when he went to bed. But standing there next to Clara, with the distant roar of the fair rides and the smell of fried dough curling through the air, he realized he’d been lying to himself. He was lonely, so lonely it ached, and the way she was looking at him right then made him feel like she knew it, like she didn’t think it was a flaw.
When the contest ended, the mayor’s wife stormed off after apple pie won by a single vote, and Clara started stacking leftover paper plates into a cardboard box. “I’ve got half a peach pie left, the one that almost won,” she said, nodding at the Tupperware on the table behind her. “I live five minutes from here, got a first edition of Travels with Charley I’ve been dying to show someone who doesn’t think Steinbeck is just required high school reading. You wanna come split it with me?”
Arlo hesitated for half a second, the voice in his head that’d kept him safe for 8 years screaming to say no, to go home to his empty barn and his frozen burrito dinner and the old westerns he watched every night. But he looked at her, at the flour smudge on her left wrist, at the silver hoops glinting in the string lights strung above the booth, and he nodded. He carried the pie box to her beat-up Subaru, and when she opened the driver’s side door, she leaned against it for a second, her scuffed work boot brushing his, and smiled.
He followed her down the dark tree-lined street, the warm pie box sitting on his passenger seat, the scent of ripe peaches and cinnamon wrapping around him like a blanket. He hadn’t smiled this much in almost a decade, hadn’t felt this light, like the heavy weight he’d been carrying around on his shoulders for 8 years had lifted just a little. When she turned into her driveway, he put his truck in park, grabbed the pie box, and walked toward her front door before she even had to knock to invite him in.
