Javi Ruiz, 53, has spent the last seven years avoiding small town fanfare so deliberately he almost forgot the annual Madison County street fair existed until his 16-year-old niece showed up at his vintage RV restoration shop at 8 a.m. begging him to cover the 4-H bake sale booth for an hour. He’d said no three times before she pulled out a photo of the 1968 Winnebago her dad was planning to scrap if Javi would take it for free, so he’d caved, trading his paint-stained coveralls for a faded flannel and work boots he’d hosed off ten minutes prior. The air reeked of fried oreos and freshly cut clover, a terrible country cover band slurred through a John Prine track off to his left, and he’d already turned down three offers for date setups from local moms who thought he was “too lonely for his own good” by the time Lena showed up next to him.
Lena was his ex-wife’s cousin, ten years younger, and the one person in town he’d actively avoided running into for the entirety of his messy, very public divorce. She ran a fermented vegetable booth at local markets, had a tattoo of a dill pickle on her left wrist, and had always looked at him like she knew something he didn’t, even back when he was still wearing a wedding ring. She leaned over the rickety wooden barrier between their booths to grab a paper napkin that had blown onto his stack of chocolate chip cookie tins, the frayed hem of her cutoff denim shorts brushing the bare skin of his knee where his flannel sleeve was rolled up. He smelled coconut sunscreen and the sharp, briny tang of fermented garlic off her, and his throat went dry for no good reason.
She didn’t apologize for the accidental contact, just smirked when she caught him staring, holding up a sealed jar of spicy dills she’d canned the week before. Said she’d heard he finished restoring that silver Airstream the Nashville folk singer dropped off back in March, that she’d driven past his barn shop last week and seen it parked out front, polished so bright she could see her reflection in the curved aluminum. He blinked, surprised she paid any attention to his work at all, and took the jar when she held it out to him, their fingers brushing for half a second longer than necessary. The callus on the pad of her thumb scraped his knuckle, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the cheap portable generator humming two feet away. He fought the urge to yank his hand back, warring between the part of him that knew every gossiping retiree at the fair was already side-eyeing them, and the part that couldn’t stop looking at the smattering of freckles across her nose, the way she tucked a strand of wind-tousled blonde hair behind her ear when a kid ran past yelling about a half-off cotton candy sale.
The first crack of thunder hit at 4 p.m., dark storm clouds rolling in so fast no one had time to prep their booths for the rain. A gust of wind blew her entire stack of custom jar labels into the mud at their feet, and they both knelt down at the same time to grab them, their foreheads knocking together hard enough to make both of them wince and laugh at the same time. He was still holding a crumpled label printed with a cartoon pickle when he leaned in, not thinking about the 4-H kids sprinting past to take shelter under the picnic pavilion, not thinking about his ex-wife’s tendency to post petty drama on the local neighborhood Facebook group, not thinking about the seven years he’d spent intentionally keeping everyone at arm’s length to avoid exactly this kind of messy, gossip-fueled attention. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, hard, her hand fisting in the front of his flannel to pull him closer, cold rain starting to splatter down on the back of his neck.
He pulled back half a second later, ready to stammer out an apology for crossing a line, but she just laughed, wiping the rain off her cheek with the back of her hand, and told him her cabin was five minutes up the road, she had a dry flannel that would fit him and a bottle of 12-year bourbon she’d been saving for someone worth sharing it with. He helped her load the last of the jarred pickles and sauerkraut into the back of her dented blue Subaru, tossing the half-empty tray of chocolate chip cookies from his booth into the passenger seat for the road. The rain was coming down in sheets by the time they pulled out of the fairground parking lot, the wipers slapping so loud they almost drowned out the old Johnny Cash song playing on her radio, her warm hand resting light on his thigh the whole drive.
