Rusty Okoro, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table at the August block party, nursing a hazy IPA that was already warming in the 82-degree heat. He’d avoided the cluster of neighborhood dads bickering about fantasy football drafts for 40 minutes straight, and the group of retirees complaining about property taxes even longer. He’d brought three hand-carved black walnut charcuterie boards to donate as raffle prizes, and he was sticking around long enough to make sure they got handed off before he snuck home to sand the batch of custom cutting boards he was building for a local bakery. He’d spent eight years building a routine that didn’t require small talk, that didn’t ask him to be anything more than quiet, competent Rusty who fixed wobbly porch rails for elderly neighbors and kept to himself, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 34-year-old triathlon coach who posted protein smoothie recipes on Instagram.
He didn’t see her coming until she was already sitting down on the bench next to him, close enough that her bare shoulder brushed his flannel-covered bicep when she reached for a salted peanut from the bowl between them. Mara, his new neighbor, had moved into the blue bungalow three doors down three weeks prior, ran the cat café on the main strip, had brought him lemon bars twice, both times he’d mumbled a thanks and shut the door so fast he’d nearly caught her sleeve in the frame. She was wearing a faded 1995 Tom Petty tour tank top, frayed cut-off jeans, white Converse with yellow daisies drawn on the toes in Sharpie, and there was a smudge of wheat flour high on her left forearm. The breeze shifted and he caught a whiff of lavender body wash, roasted coffee, and the faint, dusty scent of cat fur that clung to everything she wore. “You keep running from me every time I knock,” she said, her voice low and rough, roughened by years of seasonal allergies from being around 17 rescue cats 12 hours a day, and she grinned, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, a little silver stud glinting in her left nostril.
Rusty felt his ears go pink, the way they always did when he got caught being rude. He’d spent so long keeping people at arm’s length he’d forgotten how to just be nice. “Not running,” he mumbled, picking at a loose splinter on the table edge, his calloused fingers catching on the wood grain. “Just bad at talking to people I don’t know.” She laughed, loud enough that a couple sitting across the picnic table glanced over, and she leaned in a little, her knee brushing his under the table, didn’t pull away when he didn’t shift back. “You’re the guy who made that gorgeous oak bookshelf for Mrs. Henderson down the street, right? She showed me when I brought her a cat toy for her old tabby last week. Said you wouldn’t take a dime for it.” He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise, but he didn’t lean away. For the next 20 minutes they talked, or mostly he talked, about his 27 years teaching woodshop, about the kid who’d been in his 2011 class who now built custom midcentury furniture in Brooklyn, about the way black walnut was getting harder to source for a fair price, about how he hated that all the new power tools had Wi-Fi built in for no good reason. She listened the whole time, leaned in, nodded, asked questions that didn’t feel like small talk, her knee still pressed to his, her elbow brushing his every time she reached for another peanut. He felt that tight, weird pull in his chest, half desire, half disgust at himself for even thinking she could be interested, for thinking he wasn’t too old, too boring, too set in his ways to be worth anyone’s time anymore.
The emcee’s voice boomed over the speakers, calling the raffle winners, and they both paused, looked over at the stage set up by the food trucks. The third prize was his charcuterie boards, he watched a young couple who just moved into the neighborhood cheer when their number was called, and he smiled, small, to himself. Then the grand prize was called, and the emcee read off his ticket number, the one he’d stuffed into his flannel pocket an hour earlier, forgotten. He blinked, pulled it out, checked, sure enough, it matched. The grand prize was two tickets to the sold-out Tom Petty cover show at the dive bar two blocks over, the one that sold out in 10 minutes when tickets went on sale a month prior. He hated going to shows alone, was about to offer them to the kid next to him who was wearing a Petty hoodie, when Mara grabbed his arm, her palm warm, calloused from hours of kneading scone dough, her thumb brushing the soft skin on the inside of his wrist for half a beat longer than necessary. “I’ve been trying to get those for months,” she said, her eyes bright, the sun catching the streaks of gray in her dark hair. “You wanna go with me?” He hesitated for all of two seconds, then nodded, and she whooped, grabbed a napkin from the stack on the table, scribbled her number on it in blue ballpoint, pressed it into his palm, her fingers lacing with his for a second before she pulled away. “Text me tomorrow, we can talk about the cutting boards I need for the café too, I’ll pay you in free lattes for a year and unlimited cat cuddles if you want.”
She stood up then, said she had to help the event organizers pack up the coolers of beer, waved at him over her shoulder as she walked away, the hem of her cut-offs flapping in the breeze. Rusty sat there for a minute, staring at the napkin in his hand, the IPA in his other hand was completely warm now, the foam flat, he didn’t care. A kid running from the bounce house slammed into his leg, and he didn’t even grumble, the way he usually did when random kids ran into him. He folded the napkin carefully, tucked it into the inside pocket of his flannel, right over his heart, so he wouldn’t lose it. He stood up, brushed the peanut shells off his jeans, and walked over to the raffle table to make sure the rest of his donated boards got to the right winners, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t want to rush home to his quiet garage and his rigid routine. He was already counting down the days to the weekend.
