Jax Tully, 62, semi-retired custom hardwood floor refinisher, had held the same left-end stool at The Salty Spur bar every Saturday night for eight years running, ever since his wife packed her bags and moved to Arizona with a guy who sold solar panels. His only personality flaw, if you asked him, was holding a grudge longer than he held a finish sander on a tricky white oak job, and he’d held a grudge against Clara Bennett for 11 months, ever since she’d beaten him in the county auditor race by 127 votes. He’d spent every Saturday since ranting to anyone who’d listen about her being a silver-spoon Seattle transplant who didn’t know the first thing about balancing a budget for a county where half the roads turned to mud in March.
The rain was coming down sideways when he pushed through the bar’s dented metal door that Saturday, the smell of fried clams and bourbon hitting him before the door even clicked shut behind him. His usual stool was taken. He froze halfway across the sticky linoleum, boots squelching, when the woman in the stool turned her head and smirked. It was Clara. No blazer, no campaign pin, just a faded green Pendleton flannel rolled up to her elbows, rain beading in the silver streaks cutting through her auburn hair, a half-empty glass of Bulleit on the bar in front of her, same as he ordered every week. She patted the empty stool to her left instead of moving.
He hesitated for ten full seconds, then trundled over, muttering under his breath, and sat. Their elbows brushed when he signaled the bartender, and he flinched like he’d touched a hot exhaust pipe. She laughed, low and warm, and the sound didn’t make his jaw clench like it usually did when he heard it at county meetings. “Still skittish as a feral cat, huh?” she said, and he realized he’d forgotten they’d met long before the campaign, three years prior at the county fair, when she’d fallen off a borrowed quarter horse and he’d helped her dust off, pressed a beer into her hand to take the edge off the cut over her left eyebrow. The faint, pale scar was still there, curving just above her lash line, and he found himself staring at it before he caught himself.
The jukebox in the corner was playing Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” low enough that they didn’t have to raise their voices to talk over it. He could smell pine from the damp coat slung over the back of her stool, salt from the Strait of Juan de Fuca seeping through the cracked window above the bar, the sharp, sweet tang of the peppermint gum she was chewing when she leaned in to tell him she’d just spent three hours fighting with the state legislature to keep the funding for the west county road repairs he’d been yelling about since the election. He’d been ready to snark that she was only doing it for re-election votes, but the words died in his throat when her knee brushed his under the bar, warm through the denim of their jeans, and he noticed the calluses on the tips of her fingers when she lifted her glass, the same kind he had from sanding floors, from working with his hands. “I play guitar at the grange hall open mics,” she said, like she could read his mind, wiggling her fingers a little. “You didn’t ask during any of our debates.”
The disgust he’d carried around for almost a year melted slow, like old wax under a heat gun, tangled up with a heat low in his gut he hadn’t felt since before his wife left. He wanted to yank his hand away when she reached across the bar and tapped the faded scar on the back of his right hand, the one he’d gotten from a table saw accident 15 years prior, but he didn’t. “I saw your signs all over the west end for months,” she said, grinning. “Some of them are still nailed to pine trees. You gonna go take those down, or do I have to send a code enforcement officer after you?” He laughed, loud enough that the bartender glanced over, and admitted he’d only run for auditor because his fishing buddies had dared him to, that he’d never even wanted the job, that he’d rather sand a floor full of old pet stain than sit in an office for 40 hours a week.
She leaned in a little closer, and he could smell the bourbon on her breath mixed with peppermint, her shoulder almost pressed to his now, no space between them. She told him she’d voted for him for county road foreman twice, back when he ran for that, that she’d always thought he was smarter than the silly campaign rants he’d gone on last year, that she’d been avoiding The Salty Spur for months because she didn’t want to fight with him when she was already tired from work.
By the time the bartender yelled that last call was in 10 minutes, the rain had slowed to a soft drizzle. He asked her if she wanted to walk down to the 24-hour diner on the corner, the one that served blueberry pancakes big enough to cover a plate, and she nodded, sliding her coat on. He held the bar door open for her, and she slipped her arm through his when they stepped outside, holding her umbrella over both of their heads, rain dripping off the edge onto the toe of his work boot. He didn’t pull away.
