Roy Pacheco, 52, vintage Airstream refurbisher, has spent the better part of the last eight years avoiding unplanned social interactions. Since his divorce finalized, he’s kept his days filled with sanding aluminum paneling, reupholstering dinette cushions, and hanging out with his border collie Mabel, only talking to clients who book him six months out and his next-door neighbor who drops off peach pie every Sunday. His biggest flaw is that he overthinks every small kindness, convinced anyone who approaches him outside of a work order is either after a free repair or looking to pass along town gossip he has zero interest in. He only showed up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his neighbor threatened to stop bringing pie if he bailed again, so he’s propped against a splintered wooden picnic table, half-eaten bowl of five-alarm chili in one hand, Mabel curled at his feet, trying to tune out the roar of the crowd and the twang of the local bluegrass band playing 20 feet away.
He turns to grab a napkin from the stack on the table and slams right into someone holding a matching plastic bowl, a dollop of chili splattering onto the sleeve of his worn gray flannel. Before he can apologize, a hand wraps around his wrist, pulling his arm closer, and a crumpled paper napkin dabs at the red stain. He freezes when he looks up, because it’s Clara Marlow, the woman who moved back to town three months prior to take over her late mother’s knitting shop, the same girl he’d carried a torrid, unspoken crush on for all four years of high school, when she’d dated his best friend and he’d been too nervous to even say hello outside of group hangouts. She’s still got that same gap between her two front teeth, the same faint scar above her left eyebrow from the time she crashed her bike into the fence at the town pool when they were 16, and she smells like lavender fabric softener and the cinnamon churros the food truck by the entrance is selling.
The second she realizes she’s still holding his wrist, she lets go, her cheeks pinking a little, but she doesn’t step back, keeping the toe of her scuffed work boot two inches from his. She says she recognized him from across the field, had been meaning to reach out, saw photos of the 1972 Airstream he refurbished for the local coffee shop on the town Facebook group. She’s got a beat-up 1969 Scamp trailer behind her shop, inherited from her mom, and wants to turn it into a mobile yarn pop-up, but can’t fix the leaky roof or rusted undercarriage on her own. Roy’s first instinct is to say no, make up an excuse about being booked solid through next year, run back to his quiet pole barn where he doesn’t have to confront the dumb, fluttery feeling he gets when she grins at him like that. He’d sworn off side jobs for people he found attractive two years prior, after a woman strung him along for three months of free repair work only to ghost him the second the job was done.
He’s halfway through forming the lie when she laughs, soft and low, and Mabel leans into her leg, nuzzling her hand for a scrap of the cornbread she’s holding in her other hand. She breaks off a piece and feeds it to Mabel, her knuckles brushing the dog’s ear, and says she’s not going to ask for a discount, she’ll even pay double his usual rate, she just didn’t know who else to trust with it. She mentions she still remembers the time her beat-up VW Bug died in the high school parking lot senior year, he’d stayed after football practice to fix the alternator for her, never even asked for gas money or a thank you. Roy’s throat goes dry, because he’d forgotten that memory entirely, had buried it under 30 years of other, less embarrassing high school moments. The sun dips a little lower, gilding the edges of her light brown hair, and she tilts her head, waiting for his answer, her eyes never leaving his.
He says yes, tells her to swing by his pole barn Saturday at 10 a.m., to bring black coffee, no sugar. She grins so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle, and says she’ll even throw in a bag of the hazelnut creamer she remembers he used to dump into his coffee at the diner after study hall, a detail he had no idea she’d ever noticed. She squeezes his forearm once, quick, the pressure warm through the thin fabric of his flannel, before she turns to walk back to the table where her friends are waving her over. Halfway across the field, she glances over her shoulder, and winks.
He looks down at the faint chili stain on his sleeve, then takes a sip of his lukewarm beer, and for the first time in eight years, he’s actually looking forward to a Saturday that doesn’t involve sandpaper or aluminum shavings.
