Manny Rios, 52, vintage RV restorer, got dragged to the annual Silverton Street Fair by his buddy Jake, who owed him three weeks of free labor for patching the rusted undercarriage of his 1972 Winnebago. Jake bailed 45 minutes in, ran off with a woman he’d dated in high school, left Manny holding a sweating hazy IPA, standing in front of a booth selling homemade jams and pickles. He’d avoided the fair every year since moving to town three years prior, hated small talk, hated the forced cheer, preferred to spend his weekends sanding aluminum paneling and tuning old generator engines in his side yard. His ex-wife had left him eight years before, said he cared more about broken RVs than he did about her, and he’d never bothered to prove her wrong, kept his social circle limited to people who only called when they needed a part or a repair.
He was halfway considering cutting out early, walking the three blocks back to his house, when he saw her. Clara, the woman who’d moved into the house two doors down three months prior with her husband, the regional sales rep who was gone more than he was home. He’d only ever waved at her over the fence, caught glimpses of her hanging laundry or watering her tomato plants, never spoken more than two words to her. She was wearing a loose cream linen dress that hit mid-calf, strappy leather sandals caked with dust from the fairgrounds, her brown hair pulled back in a loose braid that had a few stray strands sticking to the sweat on her neck. She was leaning over the jam booth, holding a sample spoon to her mouth, and when she swallowed she smiled, the kind of smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes, and Manny’s feet froze to the dirt path.
She knocked a small jar of peach jam off the edge of the table when she reached for another sample, and he moved before he thought, caught it one handed before it hit the ground. He held it out to her, and when she took it her fingers brushed his, warm, calloused a little, like she worked with her hands too. She thanked him, laughed a little, said she was always knocking things over, had broken three mugs in the last month alone. He found himself laughing back, telling her he broke at least one wrench a week, got too frustrated when parts didn’t fit like they were supposed to. She leaned in a little when he talked, the scent of jasmine lotion and ripe peach hitting him, and he had to force himself not to lean in too. She said she’d been staring at the 1968 Airstream he had parked in his side yard for weeks, her dad had owned the exact same model when she was a kid, they’d driven it all up and down the West Coast every summer.
The noise of the fair faded a little for a minute. He knew he should walk away. He’d never been the kind of guy who hit on married women, prided himself on being a straight shooter, the guy who didn’t cause trouble, didn’t mess with other people’s lives. But she was standing so close her shoulder brushed his when a group of rowdy teens pushed past, and she didn’t move away, just kept talking, told him her husband was in Denver for a sales conference all week, she’d been bored out of her mind, decided to come to the fair alone because she didn’t have anyone else to go with. He told her he’d been restoring the Airstream for two years, was almost done, had replaced every single part from the floorboards up, planned to drive it up to Alaska when it was finished. Her eyes lit up when he said that, and she asked if she could see it sometime, said she’d love to look through the interior, see if it was the same as her dad’s.
The sun started to set, painting the sky pink and tangerine over the old apple orchard at the edge of the fairgrounds, and she tilted her head toward it, said the crowds were starting to get to her, asked if he wanted to walk over there where it was quieter. He nodded, didn’t even think about it. They walked past the ferris wheel, past the cotton candy booth, the twang of the live bluegrass band fading behind them, until they were under the gnarled apple trees, the grass soft and cool under their sandals. She stopped, turned to him, and he could see the gold light catching the freckles across her nose, the way her lips were parted a little like she was nervous to say what she was going to say. She told him she’d watched him working in his yard every weekend, noticed how slow he was, how careful he was with every little piece of the Airstream, that she hadn’t met anyone who cared that much about anything in a long time. She lifted her hand, rested it on his wrist, slow, deliberate, not an accident, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his faded work flannel.
He didn’t pull away. He knew the risk, knew that if anyone saw them, if her husband found out, the quiet little life he’d built for himself here would get messy, would turn into the kind of drama he’d spent years running from. But he hadn’t felt this seen, this interested in another person, in almost a decade, and the thought of walking away now made his chest ache. He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place after the fair closed, said he had a loaf of sourdough on the counter, they could crack open that peach jam she liked, take a full tour of the Airstream. She smiled, bit her bottom lip, nodded, pulled her phone out of her dress pocket to type his number in, her fingers shaking a little when she handed him the phone to put his name in. She sent him a quick text right there, just a peach emoji, so he’d have her number too, said she’d stop by at 9, once all the fair traffic died down. When she turned to walk back toward the fair entrance, he stood there for another five minutes, staring at her name in his phone, the faint sweet scent of peach still clinging to the air around him.
