Moe Pritchard, 58, makes his living restoring vintage outboard motors out of a cinder block shop behind his 10-acre spread outside Athens, Ohio. He’s avoided any sort of romantic entanglement since his wife left him for a Fort Lauderdale realtor 12 years prior, and his biggest flaw is that he carries guilt like a backpack stuffed full of lead—especially when it comes to Lila, his late best friend Ron’s ex-wife. Ron was his hunting and fishing buddy for 30 years, dropped dead of a heart attack on a deer stand three years back, and Moe has spent every day since dodging one-on-one interactions with Lila, scared the stupid, quiet crush he’s nursed for 22 years would slip out before he could stop it. He’s at the county fair on a sticky late August evening, just finished judging the small engine restoration contest, grabbed a cold PBR, and claimed a half-empty picnic table at the back of the beer tent, far away from the line dancing crowd yelling along to bad 90s country.
Fried dough and charcoal smoke curl through the tent’s canvas roof, the Ferris wheel’s rusted hydraulics groan every time it shifts weight, and a kid wails so loud from the Tilt-A-Whirl 50 yards away Moe can hear him over the speakers. He’s picking at a splinter in the pine tabletop when a shadow falls across his beer, and he looks up to see Lila standing there. She’s wearing frayed cutoff denim shorts, a faded 1987 Judas Priest tour tee Moe remembers Ron buying her at a show in Cleveland, steel-toe work boots caked with topsoil, and smudges of dark dirt on her left forearm and the curve of her jaw. She doesn’t ask if she can sit, just drops her own can of beer on the table and slides onto the bench right next to him, her bare thigh pressing firm and warm against the denim of his work jeans. He freezes halfway to lifting his cup to his mouth.
She teases him first, throaty laugh the same as it was at all those bonfires back at Ron’s old place, says she’s been hunting him all week, tracked him down at the 4-H bee exhibit earlier but he bailed out the back before she could say hi. He grunts, says he was running late to drop off his contest entries, which is half true and half a lie—he’d bailed specifically because he saw her walking toward him, scared he’d say something dumb. She leans in to show him a photo on her beat-up iPhone, her shoulder brushing his, her hair smelling like lavender shampoo and the diesel she uses to run her riding mower. The photo is of a dented 1962 Evinrude 5.5 horsepower outboard, half-buried under a pile of old fishing nets in the back of her dad’s old shed.
The tightness in his chest loosens a little; those old Evinrudes are his favorite, he’s got three fully restored models lined up on the shelf of his shop right now. He asks how long it’s been sitting there, she says 40 years, her dad forgot about it when he sold the lake house, left it for her when he died last spring. She pauses, runs a finger around the rim of her beer can, the condensation glistening on her chipped red nail polish, and says she didn’t ask anyone else to look at it, didn’t want some kid from the auto parts store who can’t tell a carburetor from a spark plug messing it up. He nods, tries not to stare at the way her finger moves, tries not to think about how many nights he’d stayed up alone after his wife left, wondering what it would feel like to wipe that smudge of dirt off her jaw.
Guilt hits him then, sharp as a hunting knife to the ribs, and he shifts a little away from her, mumbles that he’s got a lot of work on his plate right now. She doesn’t let him pull away, reaches out and brushes a stray honey bee wing off the cuff of his flannel shirt, her fingers lingering on his wrist for three full beats, too long for a friendly touch. She says she knows he feels guilty, says Ron told her about the crush three weeks before he died, sitting on their front porch drinking cheap lager. Moe’s mouth goes dry, he stares at her, can’t believe what he’s hearing. She says Ron laughed about it, said he always knew, said if anyone was gonna take care of her after he was gone, he wanted it to be Moe, no one else.
He sits there for a minute, the noise of the fair fading into a low hum, all he can hear is the thud of his own heart in his ears. He’d spent three years hating himself for every time he’d looked at her too long, every time he’d left a jar of his wild blackberry honey on her porch when she was sick, every time he’d stayed late to fix her fence after a storm, thinking he was betraying the best friend he’d had since high school. The weight he’s been carrying feels lighter all of a sudden, like someone cut the strap of that lead backpack off his shoulders. She smirks, knocks her shoulder against his, says if he’s still too much of a coward to come look at the motor, she’ll ask that 22-year-old kid from the auto parts store who keeps hitting on her, see if he knows what he’s doing.
He snorts, tells her that kid can’t even change his own oil, wouldn’t know a 1962 Evinrude if it bit him in the ass. She grins, crumples her empty beer can in her hand, stands up, holds her hand out to him. Her palm is calloused from digging pollinator garden beds and splitting firewood, matches the rough calluses on his hands from sanding motor casings and turning wrench ends all day. He takes it, his calloused hand swallowing hers, stands up too, grabs his half-finished beer and chugs the rest of it in one go. The line dancing crowd cheers as the DJ drops a 1969 Johnny Cash track, the sweet smell of fried Oreos drifts past them on the warm breeze. He doesn’t let go when they pass the fair’s ticket booth, where he and Ron used to buy cotton candy for Lila’s kids back in 2001.
