Roy Pacheco, 62, retired air traffic controller, had not deviated from his Saturday routine in 11 years and 8 months. Wake at 6:30, walk the three-mile loop around the reservoir, eat two scrambled eggs with hot sauce, spend three hours restoring vintage CB radios in his garage, attend the annual fire department chili cookoff for exactly 47 minutes before heading home to rewatch *Rio Bravo* for the 142nd time. The only deviation he’d allowed all year was letting his next-door neighbor drag him to the cookoff an hour early, and even that had him checking his watch every two minutes, the old leather band worn thin against his wrist.
The chili in his paper bowl was too spicy, loaded with enough cumin to make his eyes water, and the string lights strung between the oak trees were flickering like they might cut out any second. He was 13 minutes from his scheduled exit when a woman holding a plastic cup of iced tea bumped into his side, the cold liquid sloshing over the rim to soak a three-inch patch of his faded red flannel.
He huffed out a breath, ready to brush it off and leave early, until he looked down and recognized her. Clara Voss, 58, the new town librarian who’d moved to the area three months prior, stepdaughter of the high school principal who’d suspended Roy for three days senior year for skipping first period to surf the coast. He’d avoided her every chance he got since she moved, darting down different aisles at the grocery store, pretending to take a call when he saw her at the post office, stuck on some stupid 40-year-old hangup that she was still the pigtailed 14-year-old he’d seen carrying stacks of books down the high school hallway, even though he’d seen her haul a 50-pound box of donated hardcovers into the library alone two weeks prior, wearing a leather jacket and grease stains on her jeans.
She stepped in close before he could make an excuse to leave, dabbing at the wet spot on his sleeve with a crumpled linen napkin pulled from her jeans pocket. Her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep, and he could smell coconut shampoo mixed with the cedar oil she used to repair old book spines, a scent that made the back of his neck feel warm. When she looked up at him, hazel eyes flecked with gold, she didn’t look away, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knew exactly how many times he’d ducked out of his way to avoid her.
“Sorry about that,” she said, her voice low, rough around the edges like she smoked a cigarette a day, which he’d seen her do on the library steps during her lunch break. “Some kid with a cotton candy stick ran right in front of me.” Her fingers brushed his wrist when she handed him the napkin to finish dabbing the spot, the contact light enough that he might have imagined it if his skin didn’t prickle right where she’d touched. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and when they both stepped back to let a group of teens carrying snow cones run past, his knee knocked hers, denim against denim, and she laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the chatter of the crowd and the crackle of the nearby fire pit.
They talked for 18 minutes, and Roy didn’t check his watch once. She told him she’d quit her job as a corporate paralegal in Portland after her husband died six years prior, sick of following everyone else’s rules, sick of waking up every morning dreading the next 12 hours. She teased him about his 1979 football team photo she’d found in the stack of yearbooks the high school donated to the library, the mullet he’d spent three months growing, the chipped front tooth he’d gotten crashing into a goal post during the homecoming game. He told her about the 30 years he’d spent as an air traffic controller, how the rigid schedules and strict protocols had kept him sane when his wife left him for a real estate agent in Arizona, how he’d gotten so used to planning every second of every day that he’d forgotten what it felt like to do something unplanned.
The first firework went off at 7 PM sharp, a burst of bright pink that lit up the darkening sky, the boom echoing off the hills west of town. Roy jumped, his hand landing automatically on her lower back to pull her out of the way of a group of drunk volunteer firefighters who stumbled past, yelling and waving plastic beer cups. She didn’t step away, leaning into his side a little, her shoulder pressed to his chest, and he could feel the warmth of her through the thin fabric of her t-shirt.
“I’ve been trying to ask you to come to the library’s vintage western film night for three weeks,” she said, not looking up at him, her eyes fixed on the next burst of blue firework overhead. “You always walk the other way when you see me. Figured you either hated librarians or had a warrant out.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. He’d spent weeks fighting the urge to talk to her, torn between the stupid, lingering guilt of getting suspended by her stepdad all those years ago, the voice in his head that said he was too old, too set in his ways, too boring for someone who fixed old motorcycles on the weekends and quoted John Ford movies off the top of her head, and the sharp, quiet desire that had settled low in his chest every time he saw her.
“Was being an idiot,” he said, his hand still resting light on her back. “Stuck on some 40-year-old grudge I didn’t even realize I was still holding.”
He didn’t mention the *Rio Bravo* rewatch he’d planned. Didn’t check his watch to see how far off schedule he was. When the fireworks ended, and the crowd started to disperse, she tilted her head toward the parking lot, where her beat-up 1987 Ford Ranger was parked, a sticker for the local animal shelter on the back window. “Diner down the road has vanilla milkshakes that taste exactly like the ones they served at the soda shop when we were kids,” she said. “Wanna skip whatever boring thing you had planned and get one?”
He said yes before he could overthink it. They walked across the gravel parking lot together, his elbow brushing hers every few steps, the cool evening air biting at his cheeks, the faint sound of the fire department’s radio playing old Johnny Cash songs drifting over from the picnic area. When she opened the passenger door for him, the corner of her mouth tugged up in a grin that made his chest feel lighter than it had in 12 years.
