Elias Voss, 52, has made a living for 18 years restoring vintage campers out of the cinder block shop behind his house in coastal Oregon, and his greatest flaw is that he’d rather sand down a rusted Airstream frame for 12 hours straight than make small talk with anyone who doesn’t know the difference between a 1972 Winnebago Brave and a 1973 Chieftain. His ex-wife left him 12 years back, when he blew off their 10th anniversary trip to Cabo to finish a restoration for a client who paid double for rush work, and he hasn’t bothered pursuing anything even close to romance since. Most days he’s fine with that. The work is predictable. The only company he needs is his old hound dog, Mabel, and the classic country he blares over the shop speakers.
He’s manning the block party grill on the third Saturday in July, because everyone in town knows he smokes the best brisket for 20 miles, when he spots her walking toward him. Lila Marlow, 48, his new next door neighbor, the only daughter of his old high school auto shop teacher, who he’d worked for part time through senior year. He’d helped her fix her beat up 1998 Civic when she was 16, and he’d barely spoken to her in 30 years until she moved into the house two doors down three months prior, after her husband died of a sudden heart attack and she inherited her dad’s place.
He feels a sharp, stupid twist of guilt in his gut when he glances down at her sundress, the linen soft and sun-bleached, hitting her calves just above the scuffed white Converse she’s wearing. He shouldn’t be looking. He’d watched her grow up, for Christ’s sake. He’d been at her high school graduation party, for god’s sake, had eaten a slice of her grandma’s peach pie there. But when she laughs at his offhand joke about the town mayor’s terrible new plan to pave over the community garden, the sound bright and loud over the music, he can’t help the small smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth, the one he hasn’t pulled out for anyone but Mabel in years.
When he hands her the plate piled high with brisket sliders and a side of coleslaw, their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, softer than he expects, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot grill grate, his ears burning. She doesn’t comment on it, just smirks a little, like she knows exactly what just ran through his head, and tells him she found a box of old auto shop manuals in her dad’s attic last week, ones with his name scribbled inside the front cover from when he was a kid. She says she’s got a bottle of 12-year-old bourbon up at her house, the same kind her dad used to keep for special occasions, and asks if he wants to come over after he’s done with the grill to go through them.
He hesitates for a full five seconds, his brain short circuiting between the voice in his head that’s screaming that this is wrong, that he’s going to mess this up, that he doesn’t deserve to have someone look at him like she is, head tilted, eyes crinkled at the corners like she already knows he’s going to say yes, and the part of him that’s been lonely for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone want to spend time with him that isn’t asking for a quote on a camper restoration. He nods before he can talk himself out of it, and she grins, tells him she’ll leave the porch light on.
He wraps up the grill an hour later, handing off the last of the sliders to a group of teen boys who’ve been hovering around the table for 20 minutes, wipes the grease off his hands on the leg of his oil-stained Carhartts, and grabs the six pack of hazy IPA he’d stashed under the table earlier as a backup. Mabel’s curled up on his porch when he walks past his house, so he lets her in, leaves a bowl of food out for her, and walks the two doors down to Lila’s place.
The porch light is on, just like she said, and she’s sitting on the weathered wooden porch swing, the box of manuals at her feet, the golden retriever puppy curled up in her lap. The sun has almost set, painting the sky pink and orange over the ocean a mile away, and the sound of the block party fades to a low hum the second he steps up onto the porch. She pats the spot next to her on the swing, and he sits down, the old wood creaking under his weight. She pours him a glass of bourbon, the amber liquid glinting in the porch light, and when she passes it to him, their knees knock under the small wicker side table next to the swing. He doesn’t pull away.
