Merv Pritchard, 62, vintage neon sign restorer, stood in the middle of the Knoxville fall beer festival picking mustard off the cuff of his faded Willie Nelson hoodie, already regretting letting his buddy talk him into coming. The guy had bailed 20 minutes in to run home to his pregnant wife, leaving Merv with a half-eaten smoked sausage, a hazy IPA that tasted more like citrus than beer, and zero desire to make small talk with the swarm of 20-something hikers and local business owners milling around the food trucks. He’d avoided large gatherings for the better part of 7 years, ever since his wife left him for a county zoning official half his age, and every time a stranger bumped his shoulder he itched to climb back in his beat-up Ford F-150 and drive home to his garage full of half-restored 1950s highway signs.
He spotted her before she saw him, leaned up against a corn dog truck sipping a peach hard seltzer, and his jaw tightened. Lila Marquez, 41, the new county health inspector who’d written him a $320 fine three weeks prior for improperly storing the neon tubing sealant in his workshop. He’d fought her on it for 45 minutes that day, called her a stuck-up pencil pusher, threatened to file an appeal, and hadn’t thought about anything else besides how much he hated her for 3 straight days after. She wasn’t wearing the frumpy navy blazer and sensible flats she’d had on at his shop, though—she was in high-waisted black jeans, a cropped red flannel that showed a sliver of tanned skin at her waist, and scuffed white converse, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid that had come loose at the temples. Before he could duck behind the nearby pretzel stand, she looked up, locked eyes with him, and grinned, waving him over.
He hesitated for 10 full seconds, then sighed and walked over, the gravel crunching under his work boots. The bluegrass band on the main stage was cranked so loud she had to lean in to yell over the fiddle twang when he got close, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she did. “Did not expect to see the most stubborn neon restorer in east Tennessee here,” she said, and he could smell pine soap and the faint fizz of her seltzer, could feel the heat of her arm through his hoodie. He grunted, nodded at her cup. “Didn’t expect to see the woman who cost me half a week’s profit drinking overpriced seltzer at a beer festival.”
She laughed, loud and throaty, and didn’t move away even when a group of college students stumbled past, shoving Merv a half-step closer to her. “You’re still mad about that fine? I tried to tell you, you just needed a $20 labeled storage cabinet, not a full workshop remodel. You were too busy yelling about government overreach to listen.” She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth still tugged up, and he found himself staring at the smattering of freckles across her nose, the little silver hoop in her left nostril he hadn’t noticed when she was in his shop chewing him out. He’d spent so long painting her as a heartless bureaucrat in his head he’d forgotten she was a person outside of the health department logo on her blazer.
They talked for 20 minutes, standing so close their knees knocked every time one of them shifted their weight. He found out she’d moved to Knoxville from Chicago 6 months prior, hated 90% of the bureaucratic red tape her job made her enforce, and had been following his Instagram of finished neon signs for 2 months before she ever showed up to his workshop. “That Dairy Queen sign you finished last week? I almost texted you to ask if I could come see it in person, but I figured you’d slam the door in my face,” she said, and when he passed her his IPA to try, their fingers brushed for three full beats, the cold condensation on the can mixing with the heat of her skin. He felt a jolt go up his arm, and she held eye contact with him the whole time she took a sip, no trace of the professional distance she’d had at his shop.
The sky opened up all at once, cold October rain pouring down so hard it soaked through his hoodie in 10 seconds flat. Everyone around them scrambled for cover, and the only awning nearby was a tiny 4-foot wide one over the soda machine by the taco truck, so they huddled under it pressed chest to chest, both laughing so hard their sides hurt. Rain dripped off the brim of his faded Tennessee baseball cap onto her forehead, and he lifted his hand to wipe it off with his thumb before he could think better of it. His knuckles brushed her cheek, soft and warm even through the rain, and she tilted her face into his palm for half a second, her eyes fluttering shut for just a beat.
He didn’t pull his hand away. “I’ll drop the appeal I filed against that fine,” he said, quiet enough only she could hear it, the rain drumming on the awning over their heads. “If you let me buy you dinner after this. And you can come see the DQ sign whenever you want.” She grinned, her hands coming up to rest on his chest, the rain dripping off the ends of her braid onto his hoodie. “The appeal was gonna get thrown out anyway,” she said, “but I’ll take the dinner. And I want a tour of the whole workshop, not just the DQ sign.”
The rain slowed to a drizzle 10 minutes later, and they walked toward the taco truck at the edge of the festival grounds, his hand brushing the small of her back every few steps, no one they knew around to side-eye the 21-year age gap, no fine paperwork, no health department rules hanging over their heads. The air smelled like wet asphalt and grilled corn, and she knocked her elbow into his when he told her about the 1960s motel sign he was picking up the next weekend, her laugh mixing with the faint sound of the bluegrass band behind them. He stepped ahead of her to hold the taco truck’s makeshift plastic awning open for her, his fingers brushing hers as she walked under it.
