He was half-watching a pair of teen boys lose at cornhole so badly they looked ready to throw their boards through the tent when she walked up. He recognized her immediately, even though he’d only seen her twice, 25 years prior, when she was 19 and crashing his ex’s family Christmas, drunk on spiked eggnog and begging him to fix her rusted 10-speed. Lila, his ex’s younger cousin, now 44, her sun-bleached auburn hair pulled back in a frayed braid, freckles dusting her nose and cheekbones, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Rumours tee that had a hole right at the neckline, work boots caked in red central Ohio clay. She held a paper plate piled high with pulled pork, and when she stopped right in front of him, her shoulder brushed his bicep, close enough that he could smell coconut shampoo and peppermint lip balm over the smoke.
“Moe, right?” She smiled, and the corner of her mouth crinkled the same way it had when she’d crashed his workbench back in 1999, begging for a new bike chain. “I heard you were still around fixing every broken thing within 10 miles. I’m renting that little cottage out on Route 42, the one with the overgrown rose bushes out front? The riding mower out there is dead as a doornail, and I’ve got ticks eating me alive every time I try to push mow the two acres.”
Moe’s first instinct was to say no. He’d made a rule the day his ex left him for a traveling insurance salesman in 2001: no messing with anyone tied to her side of the family, no exceptions. It was messy, it was small-town gossip bait, it was the kind of move that would make every old biddy at the Methodist church talk for six months straight. But then she leaned in a little closer, like she was sharing a secret, and her elbow pressed into his ribs when she laughed at his dumb joke about linemen who couldn’t tell a wire from a wet noodle. Her eyes lingered on his hands, calloused and crisscrossed with thin white scars from 40 years of climbing 80-foot poles in blizzards and thunderstorms, when he told her about the time he’d stayed up 18 hours straight fixing a downed line during the 2014 ice storm so a nursing home could get their heat back.
She grabbed a second beer from the cooler at their feet when a group of rowdy teens ran past, and her thumb brushed his knuckle when she handed it to him, warm and soft against the rough, grease-stained skin. She said she was a travel nurse, in town for a 3-month ICU contract at the local hospital, that she’d spent the last three years bouncing between COVID units in 12 different states, that she was tired of sleeping in empty apartments with no furniture, tired of eating gas station sandwiches for dinner. She mentioned she remembered how he’d stayed up late fixing her bike for free that Christmas, how he’d slipped her an extra $20 for gas when she left to go back to college, how her cousin had never once appreciated how he’d fix every family member’s broken car or fence or HVAC unit for nothing, how he’d shovel the old lady next door’s driveway every winter even when his knees ached so bad he could barely walk.
Moe felt that tight, familiar twist in his chest, the part of him that had spent 20 years shutting down any hint of softness, any hint of something that might make him feel less like a robot and more like a person, warring with the part of him that wanted to lean into the warmth of her shoulder pressed against his, the way she laughed at his bad jokes like they were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. He told himself it was wrong, that everyone would talk, that his ex would throw a fit so loud it would reach the next county, but when she bit her lower lip and tilted her head and said she’d pay him in peach pie, the kind his grandma used to make, he caved before he could think better of it.
He showed up at her cottage the next afternoon at 2, his toolbox in the back of his beat-up Ford F-150, a six pack of the same cheap lager in the passenger seat. She was on the porch, barefoot, wearing a loose white linen shirt that hung off one shoulder, holding a cold beer for him already. He fixed the mower in 22 minutes flat, a loose carburetor that just needed a quick cleaning, got grease all over the front of his gray tee, and when she stepped up to dab at it with a wet paper towel, her hand lingered on his chest for three full beats, her palm warm through the thin cotton.
They sat on the rickety porch swing after that, drinking beer, watching the sun dip low over the cornfields behind the cottage, the air smelling like rose bushes and cut grass and diesel from the farm down the road. He told her about the rule he’d made 20 years prior, about how he’d spent two decades avoiding anything that might make him feel even a little bit vulnerable, about how he thought he was too old for all of this now. She laughed, said her ex-cousin had been married twice more since she left Moe, that she couldn’t care less what she thought, that she’d had a crush on him since she was 19, that she’d asked three different people at the pig roast if he was still single before she worked up the nerve to talk to him.
They kissed slow, the sun painting the sky pink and orange behind them, her hand tangled in the short gray hair at the nape of his neck, her lips tasting like peach and beer and peppermint. He stayed for dinner, grilled burgers and potato salad, and she brought out that peach pie she’d promised, sweet and tart and warm, the crust flaking off onto his jeans when he took a bite. When she leaned over to lick a stray crumb of pie crust off his jaw, he laced his calloused fingers through hers and didn’t let go for the rest of the night.
