Rafe Mendez, 62, retired lineman for the Upper Cumberland Electric Co-op, had only showed up to the fire department chili cookoff to buy three boxes of caramel corn from his 10-year-old grandson’s Boy Scout troop. He’d planned to be gone in 10 minutes, back to his garage and the half-restored 1972 F-100 he’d been tinkering with for 8 years, ever since his wife Lorraine died of pancreatic cancer. His flaw, the one his daughter nagged him about every Sunday dinner, was that he’d turned guilt into a full-time personality: he’d missed so many of his kid’s recitals and ball games working 12-hour shifts climbing poles in ice storms and summer heat, he’d decided once Lorraine was gone he didn’t deserve to enjoy anything that didn’t feel like penance.
The air smelled like hickory smoke, chili powder, and the damp oak leaves crunching under his steel-toe boots. He’d just taken a bite of a free sample of chili so hot it seared the tip of his tongue, when he dropped his plastic spoon. He bent to grab it, and his shoulder collided with something soft, a yelp sounding right next to his ear. When he stood, he was inches from Elara Voss, 58, the new part-time town librarian who’d moved to the county three months prior after a messy divorce from a Chicago corporate lawyer. He’d seen her once before, when he’d dropped off a box of Lorraine’s old romance novels at the library, and he’d left so fast he’d forgotten his work gloves on the front desk.
Her dark curly hair was streaked with silver, pulled back in a messy braid, and she was wearing a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt under a red flannel, work boots caked in mud from the old cottage she was fixing up on the edge of town. She was holding a jar of pickled okra, and when they both reached for the fallen spoon at the same time, their hands brushed. Her skin was cool, calloused at the fingertips from digging in her garden and restocking library shelves, and the jolt went all the way up Rafe’s arm to the base of his skull. He hadn’t felt anything like that since he was 19, sneaking Lorraine into a drive-in movie in the back of his dad’s pickup.
She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of kids screaming and firemen joking around the grill. “You always take out strangers when you’re hunting for cutlery, or am I just lucky?” she said, holding up the spoon and handing it to him. He mumbled an apology, wiped his free hand on the leg of his work jeans, and realized he was still holding the half-eaten bowl of chili, the heat seeping through the paper into his palm. She leaned in a little, close enough that he could smell cinnamon and pine cleaner on her flannel, and nodded at the thick, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm. “That look like a work injury?”
For the next hour, he forgot all about the F-100 in his garage, forgot he’d told his daughter he’d be home by 7, forgot the list of reasons he’d spent 8 years avoiding any conversation that didn’t involve truck parts or power grids. He told her about the scar, from a 2011 ice storm when a pine tree took down the pole he was climbing, and he’d hung 30 feet in the air for 45 minutes waiting for rescue. She told him she’d broken her wrist last month falling off a ladder restocking the top shelf of poetry collections, and she’d had to type all the library’s new book announcements one-handed for two weeks. He didn’t even notice when his grandson waved at him from the parking lot, already in his mom’s SUV, driving away. Twice, she brushed crumbs off his flannel shirt when she was making a point, her fingers lingering just long enough that he felt his face heat up, like a kid in high school sitting next to his crush at lunch.
The conflict sat heavy in his chest the whole time they talked. He’d always told himself dating anyone was a betrayal of Lorraine, let alone someone his daughter had once mentioned as her favorite substitute teacher back in high school. He could already hear the gossip at the local diner, the guys he used to work with teasing him for chasing the new librarian, the quiet judgment from people who’d known him and Lorraine for 40 years. Part of him wanted to make an excuse, grab his jacket, and drive home to his empty house, where no one could judge him for feeling alive for the first time in almost a decade.
When the sun started to dip below the treeline, and most of the families had packed up and left, she slung her canvas bag over her shoulder, tilted her head, and smiled. “I baked a peach pie this morning, still warm on my counter. I’ve got Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison on vinyl, too. You wanna come over? No pressure, if you’ve got plans.”
He hesitated for three full seconds, thinking of the framed photo of Lorraine on his kitchen counter, the one where she was laughing at him for burning the burgers on their 25th anniversary. He could almost hear her voice, sharp and fond, telling him to stop being an idiot, that she’d never wanted him to spend the rest of his life moping. He nodded, before he could talk himself out of it.
They walked across the parking lot to her beat-up 2008 Subaru, the leaves crunching under their boots. He opened the passenger door for her, and she squeezed his wrist lightly when she slid past him, her fingers pressing into the scar on his forearm. He got in the driver’s side, turned the key, and the first rough chords of Folsom Prison Blues blared from the speakers. He rested his arm on the center console, his knuckles brushing hers where her hand sat next to the gear shift, and he didn’t pull away.
