Roman Voss is 62, retired high-voltage line worker, and he hasn’t set foot at the Maplewood block party in eight years. Not since his wife, Lila, passed, not since every neighbor would corner him to offer sad smiles and frozen casseroles he never ate. He only showed up tonight because 7-year-old Mia from two doors down banged on his front door at 4 PM, holding a hand-drawn sign for her lemonade stand and big enough puppy eyes he couldn’t say no.
He’s leaning against the gnarled oak at the edge of the cul-de-sac, nursing a lukewarm Pabst he grabbed from a cooler by the grill, when he smells it: coconut sunscreen, cut with the sweet, smoky tang of grilled peaches. He’d know that scent anywhere, has caught it drifting over the split-rail fence between his yard and his next-door neighbor’s a hundred times when she’s out tending her rose bushes. He’s never spoken to her for longer than 10 seconds, just quick waves when they’re both getting the mail, but he knows her name is Maren, knows she’s 58, knows she drives a beat-up forest green F-150 with a golden retriever decal in the back window, knows she was married to his old crew foreman, Jake, back in the 90s.
He’s still staring at the scuffed toe of his work boot when she stumbles into him, tripping over a kid’s skateboard left half-buried in the grass. The tray of smoked sausage skewers she’s holding tilts, and he grabs her elbow to steady her, his calloused palm wrapping around the warm, freckled skin just above her linen shirt cuff. Her free hand lands flat on his chest, right over the faded logo of his old union hoodie, and he can feel the heat of her through the fabric even on the mild July evening.
“Shit, sorry,” she says, laughing that low, throaty laugh he’s only ever heard through the fence when she’s yelling at her dog for digging up her tomato plants. Her eyes are the color of honey, crinkled at the corners from decades of sun, and she doesn’t step back right away, just holds his gaze like she’s been waiting to get a good look at him for years. “I swear these kids leave their toys everywhere like they’re trying to take out half the block.”
Roman grunts, can’t think of anything to say for a second, hasn’t been this close to a woman since Lila’s funeral. He’s half convinced he’s dreaming, half guilty for even noticing how good she smells, how strands of silver in her blonde hair glow when the string lights strung between the houses hit them. He always told himself she was off-limits, even when she moved in three years ago, even when he found out she’d left Jake 12 years prior, after he’d cheated on her with a secretary from the utility company office. Jake was a prick, cut corners that almost got a 21-year-old kid on their crew electrocuted back in 2006, but Roman still had that old line crew loyalty sticking in his throat, telling him not to cross that line.
They end up drifting away from the crowd, leaning against the split-rail fence between their properties, passing the skewers back and forth when no one’s looking. Their shoulders brush every time they reach for another one, the rough fabric of his flannel shirt catching on the linen of her dress, and every time it happens, he feels a jolt go up his spine like he’s touching a live wire. She teases him about the sunflower seed feeders he hangs on his porch every Sunday, says she’s watched him refill them through the kitchen window, that she loves how he still uses the bright blue ceramic feeders Lila painted back in 2012. He freezes when she says that; no one’s noticed that, not even his own kids when they come to visit, too busy trying to get him to sell the house and move to Florida.
The fireworks start right as he’s about to ask her how she knew that, bursts of red and blue and gold painting the sky above the cul-de-sac. The rest of the neighborhood crowds toward the end of the street to get a better view, but they stay back by the fence, the noise of the crowd fading into the background. She leans in a little, so close he can feel her breath on his cheek, and he doesn’t step away. Her hand brushes his where it’s resting on the fence rail, slow and intentional, not an accident this time, and when she laces her fingers through his, he doesn’t pull back. Her palm is softer than his, but there’s a thin scar across her knuckle from when she tried to fix her own lawnmower last spring, the same scar he saw her bandaging through the fence one afternoon.
The fireworks fade after 20 minutes, the crowd cheering and then starting to pack up coolers and fold up lawn chairs, but neither of them moves for a minute. She squeezes his hand, looks up at him, and says she baked a peach cobbler that morning, still warm on her kitchen counter, asks if he wants to come over. He nods, doesn’t even think to grab his empty beer bottle off the fence post, doesn’t think about the old useless loyalty he’s been clinging to for 17 years, doesn’t think about the sad casseroles or the pitying smiles he’s been avoiding for almost a decade.
They walk up her driveway side by side, their boots scuffing the same gravel he’s swept off his own walk a hundred times, and she doesn’t let go of his hand when she turns the key in her front door.
