Moe Pritchard, 62, spent most days sanding down dented aluminum siding and patching water-damaged cabinetry in vintage travel trailers for clients across western Oregon, so manning a craft fair booth full of his extra custom cutting boards felt like a lazy vacation. The August sun hung low enough to gild the tops of the fir trees lining the fairgrounds, and the air smelled like fried dough and pine, sweat sticking the collar of his faded Oregon Ducks tee to the back of his neck. He’d just sold a curly maple board to a young couple with a golden retriever puppy and was wiping sawdust off his jeans when a pair of strappy leather sandals stopped in front of his table, toenails painted the same deep red as the cherry wood slabs stacked in his workshop.
He looked up, and his jaw went tight. Lana Marquez. His ex-wife’s former best friend, the woman he’d blamed for blowing up his marriage 18 years prior, when he’d skipped his mother-in-law’s 70th birthday to fish for steelhead on the Deschutes. For almost two decades he’d assumed she’d ratted him out, had refused to speak to her even when they ran into each other at the grocery store or his kid’s high school soccer games. She was 60 now, a few silver streaks running through her dark wavy hair, a linen sundress clinging lightly to her hips where she’d been sweating walking the fair grounds, and she smelled like coconut sunscreen and the roasted almond stand two booths down. She leaned in to get a closer look at a walnut board with a natural live edge, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep, and he didn’t step back.
“I heard you restored that 1968 Airstream for the couple that runs the Main Street coffee shop,” she said, her voice still the same low, warm rasp he remembered from all those backyard barbecues he’d hosted back when he was married. She picked up the walnut board, her fingers brushing his when he passed it to her, her palm calloused the way he recalled from the pottery she’d always dabbled in. The bluegrass band playing at the other end of the fairground hit a slow, twangy chord, and a kid ran past screaming with a cotton candy cone taller than his head. Moe’s anger, the thing he’d carried around like a heavy tool belt for 18 years, felt suddenly loose, like the buckle had come undone.
He didn’t mean to ask, but the words slipped out before he could stop them: why did you tell her I was fishing? Lana laughed, a soft, dry sound, and set the board back on the table. “I didn’t,” she said, leaning against the booth edge, her knee knocking his lightly. “She tracked your fishing license purchase online. I lied and said I’d seen you launch your boat because I knew she was already cheating on you, and she was digging through your truck looking for any excuse to leave. I didn’t want her to find the pearl necklace you’d hidden under your seat for your 20th anniversary, throw it in the trash, and make you pay for it on top of everything else.” Moe blinked, and for a second he couldn’t hear the band, couldn’t smell the fried dough, all he could see was the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the tiny silver hoop earring in her left ear that he’d always thought suited her.
The fair started closing down around them, vendors folding up their tables, kids dragging tired parents toward the parking lot, and Moe realized he’d been talking to her for almost an hour. She told him she’d been divorced for seven years, that she ran a small pottery studio out of her garage on the edge of town, that she’d bought a beat-up 1972 Scotty trailer she wanted to restore, but couldn’t find anyone who knew what they were doing to work on it. He told her about the camper he was rebuilding for his granddaughter’s 16th birthday, about the way he still snuck off to fish the Deschutes three times a year, even when the weather was terrible. When the last of the food vendors turned off their neon signs, he asked her if she wanted a beer at the dive bar down the street. She said yes.
The sidewalk was still warm from the day’s sun under the soles of his work boots, their shoulders bumping every few steps as they walked, neither of them pulling away. They sat in a booth in the back of the bar, the vinyl sticky under their thighs, and she ordered a peach cider, he ordered a cold IPA. Her knee brushed his under the table halfway through their first drink, and she didn’t move it. “I always thought you got a raw deal,” she said, leaning across the table so she didn’t have to yell over the jukebox playing old Johnny Cash. “You were the only guy in that whole friend group who ever actually listened when people talked. I had a crush on you for years, back when you were still married. I never said anything.” Moe stared at her, the cold condensation from his beer dripping down his wrist, and realized he’d felt the same way, had pushed it down so deep he’d forgotten it was there, buried under all that anger he’d been carrying for no reason.
They finished their drinks an hour later, and he walked her to her car, parked under a maple tree at the edge of the bar’s lot. Fireflies flickered in the grass along the curb, and the air had cooled just enough to make the hair on his arms stand up. She stopped by the driver’s side door, turned to him, and tilted her chin up, and he leaned down and kissed her, soft at first, then a little deeper, her lips tasting like peach cider and the lime wedge from his beer. She pulled back after a minute, grinning, and slipped a small ceramic tile with a blue fish pattern into his palm, one she’d made, she said, to show him what she wanted for the countertops in her Scotty trailer. She asked him to come over to her studio the next afternoon, to talk through the build, and maybe bring that walnut cutting board she’d been looking at earlier. He nodded, typed his number into her phone, and leaned against the tree as she pulled out of the lot, her taillights fading down the dark street. He flipped the small ceramic tile over in his hand, the glaze still warm from being tucked in her pocket, and unlocked his own truck door, already looking forward to the next day.
