Aris Mendez, 62, had spent the last eight years treating neighborhood gatherings like a contagious disease. The vintage travel trailer restorer would park himself in his cinder block workshop from dawn to dusk, grease crusted under his fingernails, classic rock blaring so loud he couldn’t hear the block party chatter drifting over the fence. He only showed up to this one because his 16-year-old granddaughter had texted him three times in 20 minutes, begging him to stop by her lemonade stand for her softball team fundraiser. He showed up with a crumpled 20 dollar bill, didn’t even take a lemonade, grabbed a lukewarm can of Pabst from the cooler by the grill, and leaned against an oak tree at the edge of the lawn, flannel sleeves rolled to his elbows even though the July heat sat thick enough to sip.
He was two sips in when he spotted her. Elara Voss, 58, his late wife’s former sister-in-law, the woman his extended family had side-eyed for 20 years like they were two matches waiting to catch flame. She’d moved into the house next door three weeks prior, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid her, ducking into his workshop when he saw her watering her front yard, leaving his mail in the box for days if she was sitting on her porch sketching. She was wearing a yellow sundress dotted with sunflowers, a smudge of charcoal streaked across her left wrist, holding a paper plate of grilled corn slathered in butter and chili powder. She caught him staring, raised one eyebrow, and walked over.
She stopped three feet away first, the unspoken polite distance for two people who’d only spoken twice in the last decade, both times at family funerals. “You still look like you’re one wrong comment away from bailing to go sand a trailer frame,” she said, grinning, and the sound of her laugh hit him like something he’d forgotten he missed. He grunted, took another sip of beer, didn’t trust himself to speak. A kid darted past them, water gun raised, and she stepped sideways to avoid getting sprayed, her elbow brushing his bare forearm. The contact lasted half a second, but he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin layer of sweat on his arm, catch the faint jasmine of her lotion mixing with the smell of charcoal smoke and butter coming off her plate.
His chest tightened. He’d spent eight years training himself not to notice women, not to feel that little jolt of interest, convinced it was a betrayal of Claire, who’d died in his arms after a two year fight with breast cancer. The family gossip about him and Elara had always been quiet, but persistent, back when she was married to Claire’s younger brother: they had the same dry sense of humor, both loved camping and old Westerns, both hated the forced small talk of family holidays. He’d never acted on it, never even thought about it, not until Claire was gone, and then the guilt of even noticing Elara felt like a stone in his gut.
“You gonna invite me over to see that Airstream you’re restoring, or are you gonna keep pretending you don’t see me leaving little jars of homemade salsa on your porch step every Sunday?” she asked, and he blinked, realized he’d known the salsa was from her, had eaten every last bite, had even left the empty jars on his porch rail for her to pick up, but had never admitted it. He hesitated, then nodded, jerking his head toward the side gate leading to his backyard.
The workshop smelled like sawdust and WD-40 and lemon Pledge, string lights strung across the exposed rafters, the half-restored 1972 Airstream parked in the middle of the space, its aluminum body polished to a soft shine on one side, still dented and dull on the other. She walked straight to it, running her finger along the polished edge, and he watched the charcoal smudge on her wrist catch the light. “I got divorced three years ago,” she said, not turning to look at him. “Sold the house in Denver, took the art teacher job at the high school down the street, moved here because I knew you were here. I didn’t want to keep pretending I didn’t think about you, either.”
The stone in his gut dissolved. He’d spent so long hating himself for the quiet, unspoken pull he felt toward her, so long convinced that wanting anything other than the lonely life he’d built for himself was wrong, that the relief hit him so hard he had to lean against the workbench for a second. He walked over to her, slow, like he was scared he’d scare her off, and reached out, brushing the charcoal smudge off her wrist with his thumb. Her skin was soft, warmer than he expected, and she didn’t pull away.
They sat on the concrete floor of the workshop for the next three hours, splitting a batch of chocolate brownies he’d stashed on a shelf from his granddaughter’s last visit, talking about everything they’d missed in the last eight years: her cross country road trip after the divorce, the 1968 Scotty trailer he’d restored for a veteran last year, the trip to Yellowstone he and Claire had planned but never got to take. He told her he’d been scared to even talk to her, scared of what the family would say, scared he was dishonoring Claire’s memory, and she laughed, soft, and said Claire had told her once, drunk on margaritas at a family barbecue, that if anything ever happened to her, Elara was the only person she’d trust to take care of Aris.
By the time the sun dipped below the fence line, the string lights were the only thing illuminating the workshop, crickets chirping loud outside the open garage door. He offered to help her fix up the beat-up pop-up camper she’d mentioned buying, to replace the rotted floor and reupholster the cushions, and she offered to paint a mural of Yellowstone’s geysers on the side of his Airstream, the way he and Claire had planned. When she leaned in to kiss him, the faint jasmine of her lotion mixing with the smell of sawdust and leftover brownie, he didn’t pull away.
