Javi Mendez, 57, makes his living bringing beat-up midcentury camping gear back to life out of his cinder block garage in the Blue Ridge foothills. He’s got a scar across his left knuckle from a 1968 Coleman stove explosion his second year in business, and a rule he’s followed religiously since his ex-wife left him for his shop co-owner four years prior: no dating anyone within a five-block radius of his bungalow. Small towns run on gossip, and he’s had enough public humiliation to last two lifetimes.
He’s at the annual fall beer festival only to drop off three custom restored 1970s Igloo coolers he’d refinished for the event’s organizer, and he’s halfway to his truck when a stray elbow knocks a half-pint of spiced hard cider right out of a woman’s hand. A splash hits the cuff of her olive green flannel, the rest soaking into the sawdust at their feet. He reaches for the stack of napkins in his back pocket before he recognizes her: Lila, the woman who moved into the rental next door three weeks prior, the one he’d ducked every time she’d waved from her porch, the one who’d left a loaf of zucchini bread on his doorknob he’d left sitting on his counter for three days before he worked up the nerve to eat it.
He dabs at the wet spot on her sleeve before he thinks better of it, his calloused fingers brushing the soft skin of her forearm for half a second. She smells like pine soap and cinnamon lip balm, and when he meets her eyes she’s grinning, like she’s just caught him doing something he shouldn’t. “Was starting to think you’d never talk to me,” she says, nodding at the embroidered patch on his work shirt that reads Mendez’s Vintage Camp Restorations. “I’ve got a 1959 lantern I’ve been dying to ask you about.”
The drizzle that’s been threatening all afternoon picks up, and she nods at the empty picnic table under the edge of the beer tent. He knows he should say he has to get home to his beagle. He knows he’s breaking his own rule before he even sits down. But he pulls out the bench for her anyway, and they huddle close enough that their shoulders brush every time one of them shifts, the damp chill of the air mixing with the warm heat coming off her side. She tells him she’s a travel physical therapist who just took a permanent position at the local senior clinic, that she moved to the mountains for the hiking, that she’s been single for eight months after her ex-husband moved across the country to chase a tech job. He tells her about the stove that gave him the scar, about the beagle he found wandering the side of the highway three years prior, about the stupid, self-protective rule he’s already halfway to breaking.
The bluegrass band on the main stage cranks up a fast cover of a Johnny Cash song, and the crowd around them cheers so loud she has to lean in to hear him when he talks about the collection of vintage sleeping bags he keeps stacked in his garage. Her breath is warm against his ear, and when she laughs she rests her hand on his knee, light as a sparrow, and he doesn’t pull away. He admits he’d been avoiding her, that he’d spent the last three weeks making up excuses to stay inside when she was out gardening, that he was scared if he talked to her he’d like her too much too fast, that he’d mess it up like he’d messed up every good thing that came his way in the last decade.
She leans back, still grinning, and taps the side of his beer can with her own. “I knew it,” she says. “That’s why I kept leaving those wild blackberries on your porch, that’s why I left that dented 1960s camp mug I found at the thrift store by your mailbox. I was wearing you down.”
The rain starts coming down harder, fat cold drops soaking through the front of Javi’s flannel, and he offers to walk her home, their houses only three blocks away. They run through the empty side streets, laughing, and stop under a massive old oak tree halfway to catch their breath, the leaves shielding them from most of the rain. He kisses her before he can overthink it, and she tastes like spiced cider and that cinnamon lip balm he’d smelled earlier, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt to pull him closer.
They make it to her porch a minute later, and she fumbles with her keys for a second before pushing the door open. She nods at the lantern sitting on her entryway table, the chipped pale blue enamel glinting in the warm light from her living room lamp. “You wanna come in and take a look at that lantern?” she asks.
He doesn’t hesitate. He follows her over the threshold, the faint jingle of her copper wind chime mixing with the distant sound of the festival’s final set.
