Roy Pacheco, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the splintered edge of a picnic table at the town’s annual fire department beer garden fundraiser, sipping a hazy IPA his friend Mike had shoved in his hand an hour prior. He’d fought coming all week, grousing that crowds gave him a headache and he’d rather spend his Saturday sanding the oak dining table he was building for his niece, but Mike had called him a hermit and showed up at his door with a six pack to bully him out. The air smelled like charred bratwurst, cut grass, and the faint pine tang drifting off the national forest edge a half mile out, and a cheap speaker blared Lynyrd Skynyrd low enough that he could still hear the roar of the cornhole tournament crowd ten feet away. He’d spent most of the night keeping to himself, avoiding the small town small talk he’d hated even when he was still working, the kind where everyone asked how he was filling his days and gave him pitying looks when he said he just worked in his shop.
He’d just decided to sneak out early when a woman tripped over the table’s wobbly front leg, sending a full glass of cold rosé sloshing across the front of his gray plaid flannel. He huffed out an annoyed breath before he looked up, and froze when he recognized Clara Bennett, 58, owner of the town’s only independent bookstore, ex-wife of the former math department head he’d shared a teacher’s lounge with for 12 years. He’d always written her off as too prim, too quiet, the kind of woman who read poetry for fun and would roll her eyes at the kind of crude jokes he and his shop buddies traded. She was leaning in now, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt with a crumpled paper napkin, her shoulder brushing his chest, and he could smell lavender lotion and the faint sweet fizz of the wine on her breath. “I am so sorry,” she said, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she was half holding back a laugh at her own clumsiness, “that leg has taken out three people tonight, I swear the parks department needs to sand that thing down.”
He wanted to brush her off, tell her it was fine and he was heading out anyway, but he found himself leaning back a little to give her more room to dab at the shirt. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, surprising himself, “it’s an old shirt, I use it for staining anyway.” She laughed, a warm, throaty sound, and offered to buy him a beer to make up for it. He hesitated, then nodded, and followed her to the drink table, his boots crunching on the loose gravel. They ended up ditching the crowded main area to sit on the low stone wall under the big oak tree at the edge of the field, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted. She told him she’d remembered the little birdhouses his woodshop students made every year to donate to the library, how the kids would carve little faces into the sides and she’d hang them all along the back porch of the bookstore. He’d had no idea she’d even paid attention to that, back when he was buried under lesson plans and fighting with his ex-wife every night over text. He told her about the table he was building for his niece, and she asked a dozen questions about joinery and stain colors, like she actually cared, not like most people who nodded and changed the subject after ten seconds.
The first firework went off with a deafening boom just as he was telling her about the time a student tried to turn a lathe project into a giant bong, and she flinched hard, leaning into his side automatically. His arm went around her waist before he even thought about it, his palm resting lightly on the soft curve of her hip under her linen dress, and she didn’t pull away. She tilted her head up to look at him, her face lit up pink and blue by the bursts of light in the sky, and they were so close he could count the faint freckles across her nose. “I always thought you were such a grump back then,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it over the fireworks, “you never smiled at anyone in the teacher’s lounge. I thought you hated all of us.” He laughed, a rough, quiet sound, and admitted he’d been scared to smile back then, that his marriage was falling apart and he’d been terrified if he let anyone see how messed up he was, the whole town would be talking about it for months.
When the last firework faded, the crowd cheered, and they both pulled back a little, but his hand stayed on her waist. She asked if he wanted to walk back to the bookstore with her, said she had a bottle of good bourbon behind the counter she saved for people she actually liked. He nodded, and they walked the three blocks downtown, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the night air cool on his still-damp shirt. She unlocked the front door of the bookstore, and the smell of old paper and cinnamon hit him the second he stepped inside. She pulled the bourbon down from the shelf behind the register, poured them both two fingers in chipped ceramic mugs, and he wandered over to the vintage nonfiction section, running his finger over the spine of a 1972 copy of *Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking* he’d been trying to find for years. “That’s mine,” she said, stepping up next to him, her hand resting lightly on top of his where it lay on the book, “I’ve been trying to teach myself to make cutting boards for the holiday sale, but I keep messing up the grain alignment.” He smiled, slow, and told her he could teach her, if she wanted. She smiled back, squeezing his hand lightly. Outside, the last of the summer crickets chirp, and Roy doesn’t even think about the empty house he was planning to go home to an hour earlier.
