Leo Kozlowski is 61, spent 32 years teaching high school woodshop before retiring two years ago to run a custom cutting board side hustle out of his two-car garage in Grand Haven, Michigan. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent the 12 years since his wife left him for a country club golf pro actively avoiding anything that even smells like romance, convinced he’s too set in his routines, too rough around the edges, too boring for anyone to bother with. He buys into small town gossip more than he’d ever admit, even to himself, and he’d rather skip a fun event than be the subject of neighborhood chatter.
He’s at the local fire department’s annual end-of-summer pig roast on a golden late August evening, plastic cup of hazy IPA in one hand, greasy paper napkin in the other, wiping smudges of pork rub off the cuff of his well-worn gray flannel. The air smells like charcoal, apple wood smoke, and sugary baked beans, the din of kids screaming on the bounce house and old guys arguing about college football humming in the background. He’s half listening to a retired cop ramble about last winter’s ice storm when a woman steps up to the napkin stack he’s holding, and he freezes.
It’s Mara, his next door neighbor’s niece, the one everyone in town has been gossiping about nonstop since she showed up three weeks ago to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. He’d heard Mrs. Henderson down the street claim she caught Mara kissing a 28-year-old farm hand behind the general store, heard the ladies at the bakery whisper she left her wealthy Chicago husband for no good reason, that she’s a maneater who’ll burn through every single guy in town before moving on. He’d nodded along when his buddy made a joke about her last week, even if a tiny part of him had thought it was unfair.
She’s wearing cutoff jeans and a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, flip flops slapping against the gravel, her dark curly hair pulled back in a loose braid that’s falling apart at the ends. She smells like jasmine perfume and grilled pineapple, a scent so bright and warm it cuts right through the smoke and grease hanging in the air. She reaches for a napkin from the stack in his hand, and her forearm brushes his, soft skin and fine dark hair, her nails painted deep burgundy, chipped at the edges like she’s been spending her days hauling mulch or moving boxes for her aunt. She holds his eye contact for two beats longer than polite, a small, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and he feels his neck go hot.
“Leo, right?” she says, and her voice is lower than he expects, a little rough, like she’s been smoking or laughing too hard all day. “I’ve been meaning to track you down. That walnut cutting board you left on my aunt’s porch last week? It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever seen. I make pottery, I’ve been looking for a surface that won’t scratch when I’m trimming mugs.”
He stumbles over his answer, half because he’s still flustered from the touch, half because he’s embarrassed he bought into all the garbage people have been saying about her. He mumbles something about it being no big deal, that he makes extra for the neighbors all the time, and spills a half ounce of beer down the front of his jeans. He curses under his breath, and she laughs, loud and warm, no bite to it at all, leaning in to dab at the wet spot with the napkin she just grabbed. Her face is six inches from his, and he can see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, the faint laugh lines fanning out from the corners, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow.
“Relax, I don’t bite,” she says, tilting her head, the smirk still there. “Unless you ask me to. I know what everyone says about me. You scared to be seen talking to the town pariah?”
He snorts before he can stop himself, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders a little. “Nah. Just not used to pretty women stopping to talk to me at these things.”
She raises an eyebrow, and jerks her head toward the path leading down to the lake. “Wanna get away from all the noise? I’m sick of every old lady in a church hat staring daggers at me every time I get a second helping of coleslaw.”
He hesitates for half a second, thinking about what Mrs. Henderson would say if she saw them walking off together, then nods. They trudge down the gravel path, the sound of the pig roast fading behind them, replaced by the soft crash of Lake Michigan waves against the shore and the distant cry of seagulls. The sun is dipping low over the water, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the sand still warm under their flip flops. She leads him to a weathered driftwood log half buried in the dunes, pats the spot next to her, and he sits, close enough that their thighs brush through their jeans.
She tells him the real story first, before he can even ask. She left her husband after 20 years because he’d been cheating on her with his secretary for a decade, and she got tired of pretending to be the perfect wealthy housewife for his country club friends. The farm hand people saw her kissing was her cousin’s 19-year-old kid, who’d driven three hours to help her haul all her pottery equipment from Chicago to her aunt’s guest house, the kiss was a quick peck on the cheek as a thank you. She’s moving to town for good, opening a small pottery studio downtown, she’s sick of big city noise and fake people.
He feels stupid for ever believing the gossip, tells her as much, and she shrugs, says she gets it, small towns run on drama. She reaches over, laces her fingers through his, and his breath catches. His hands are calloused, scarred from 30 years of saw blades and splinters, hers are softer, but have tiny, faint scars across the knuckles from carving clay, her palm warm against his. “I love how rough your hands feel,” she says, quiet, like she’s sharing a secret, and he feels his chest go tight, the kind of flutter he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager taking his first date to the drive-in.
He leans in, kisses her slow, tastes like IPA and pork rub and spearmint gum, she tastes like pineapple and the same mint gum, her hand coming up to cup the side of his face, her thumb brushing the gray stubble along his jaw. They sit there for another 40 minutes, talking about his cutting board business, her plans for the studio, the time he got a splinter so deep in his thumb he had to go to the ER, the time a kiln exploded in her Chicago studio and covered her in wet clay. He walks her back to her aunt’s house at dusk, and she asks him to come over the next afternoon to help her build a workbench for the studio, says she’ll buy the pizza if he brings his power drill and a six pack of that hazy IPA he was drinking. He says yes, no hesitation this time.
When he turns to walk home, he tucks the scrap of receipt paper with her cell number scrawled across the back into the front pocket of his flannel, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t worry about what the neighbors might say.
