The air in the VFW smells like fried grease and old cigarette smoke even though they banned smoking inside ten years ago, the jukebox spitting out Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* when she slides into his booth uninvited, knee brushing his denim-clad calf under the Formica table before she even says hello. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, the new town librarian, moved up from Chicago three months prior, showed up at his shop twice already asking for old snowmobile brochures for a local winter sports history exhibit she’s curating. She’s wearing a faded flannel shirt unbuttoned at the collar, silver hoop earrings catching the neon beer sign light, and when he lifts an eyebrow at her unannounced arrival, she doesn’t look away, just smirks, holds his gaze steady until he huffs a laugh and nods at the empty spot next to his beer.
She passes him a stack of tattered 1960s Ski-Doo brochures she dug out of the library’s archive, and when her fingers brush his calloused, grease-stained knuckles, he flinches first, then doesn’t pull away. The lavender of her hand lotion cuts through the fish grease and beer smell, sharp and sweet, and she leans forward across the table, elbow brushing his, when she teases him about the rumor going around town that he only talks to his snowmobiles and his dog. He teases her back, says he’s heard she tried to start a book club dedicated to romance novels and got three whole people to sign up, and she snorts, knocks her shoulder against his, says the third person was the 82 year old retired pastor who thought the club was about Westerns.
He hesitates when she asks if she can come back to his shop to see the 1968 Alpine he’s restoring for a collector in Oslo. The whole town will see her silver Subaru following his beat up Ford F-150 down the dirt road to his place, he knows, by tomorrow half the women at the grocery store will be whispering about it, the guys at the feed store will rib him for weeks. He’s halfway to making an excuse about the mess, about Hank being skittish around strangers, when she tilts her head, runs the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, and he feels a heat in his chest he hasn’t felt in close to a decade, half disgust at how quickly he’s folding, half desperate desire he can’t outrun.
He doesn’t say anything, just slides out of the booth, nods at the door, and he can feel her grinning behind him as he walks out. The drive back to the property is quiet, dust kicking up behind his truck, crickets chirping loud through the open window, and when they step into the shop, the smell of two-stroke oil and cedar wraps around them. He flicks on the work light over the Alpine, she leans in next to him to look at the refurbished engine, shoulder pressed firm to his chest, hair brushing his jaw. He freezes for half a second, every cell screaming to pull back, hide, avoid the mess of being seen with someone, then she turns her head, faces inches apart, breath warm against his neck, and he kisses her before he can overthink it.
She tastes like the whiskey shot she bought him at the VFW and the lemonade she was drinking, hands tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck, and when they pull apart a minute later, both breathing hard, she laughs soft and low, says she’s wanted to do that since the first time she showed up at his shop. He smirks, grabs two root beers from the shop mini fridge, and they sit side by side on the workbench, work lamp light gilding the edges of her hair. When she runs a finger along the thin scar on his forearm from a 1989 snowmobile crash, he launches into the story of wiping out on a frozen International Falls lake, paramedics teasing him for wearing nothing but a denim jacket and jeans.
