Milo Rourke, 62, retired Portland fireboat pilot, had spent seven years perfecting the art of being invisible to his neighborhood. He’d mastered the head-down fast walk past the coffee shop, the one-word grumble to the kid who mowed his lawn, the art of ducking into his house before the woman who ran the used mystery bookstore down the block could wave him inside. His biggest flaw, the one his niece nagged him about every Sunday dinner, was that he’d convinced himself any joy that didn’t involve his old brindle hound or restoring his 1978 Ford F-150 was a betrayal of his wife, who’d passed from ovarian cancer in 2016.
He only agreed to come to the annual Alberta Street Fair because his 7-year-old great-nephew had begged him to try his “world famous” lemonade, and he couldn’t say no to the kid’s gap-toothed grin. He was leaning against a dented lamppost, sucking down a root beer he’d grabbed from a food cart, when he saw her. Elara, 58, the bookstore owner, was hauling a cardboard box of vintage pulp paperbacks, her cutoff denim shorts showing off calves dotted with sun spots, a faded Joan Jett tee clinging to her shoulders. She tripped over a kid’s abandoned skateboard, and he moved before he thought, catching her upper arm to steady her.
Her skin was sun-warmed, a faint smudge of blue ink smudged on her wrist, and she smelled like old paper and lavender hand cream, the kind his wife used to keep by the kitchen sink. He almost dropped his hand immediately, but she held her ground, looking up at him with those hazel eyes, no hurry to look away. The contact lasted three full beats, long enough that he felt the heat creep up his neck, long enough that he could hear the rough edge of her laugh when she righted herself. “Was starting to think you only existed at 6 a.m. walking that hound of yours,” she said, brushing a strand of gray-streaked dark hair out of her face.
The internal jolt was immediate, half embarrassment that she’d noticed his routine, half sharp, unfamiliar hunger he’d spent seven years shoving down. He’d told himself a hundred times that staring at her through the bookstore window when he walked past was creepy, that a man his age had no business thinking about anyone but the wife he’d lost, that getting involved with someone would only end in messy neighborhood gossip and more heartache. But he didn’t step back. He nodded at the box in her hands, the spines of 1950s hardboiled mysteries peeking over the top. “Selling those at the fair?”
She told him she was running a pop-up booth down the block, giving away free pulps to anyone who could name three Agatha Christie novels. They stood there for 45 minutes, leaning against that lamppost, the sound of a cover band playing Foghat two blocks over mixing with the screams of kids on the temporary ferris wheel. She teased him about the scuffed steel-toe boots he still wore even though he hadn’t stepped foot on a fireboat in three years, he teased her about the neon “MURDER SHE READ” sticker plastered to the laptop sticking out of her canvas tote. Their hands brushed when she pulled a lemon drop out of her jacket pocket and passed it to him, the sugar coating dissolving on his tongue sweet enough to make his head spin a little. When a group of teens pushing a cooler of beer barreled past, he stepped closer to her, his shoulder bumping hers, and neither of them moved apart.
He almost forgot he was supposed to check back in with his niece, until his great-nephew ran up, hugged his leg, and begged him to buy him a cotton candy. He gave the kid a ten dollar bill, told him to bring him back a blue one, and when he turned around Elara was leaning against the lamppost, watching him, a small smile on her face. “I’m closing the shop early tomorrow,” she said, picking at a loose thread on her tee, like she was nervous for the first time all afternoon. “Got a cooler of peach hard cider and a blanket. Was gonna head down to the riverbank to watch the festival fireworks. Figured you might wanna come. No pressure if you don’t.”
The automatic no was on the tip of his tongue, the usual excuse about his hound needing to be let out, about having to work on his truck, about being too tired. But then he looked at her, the way she was biting the corner of her lower lip, the ink smudge still on her wrist, and he realized he was tired of being alone, tired of pretending he didn’t want something that wasn’t just routine and grief. “Yeah,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “I’ll bring the popcorn. Salted caramel. I make it myself.”
He showed up the next evening 10 minutes early, his old canvas camp chair slung over one shoulder, a Tupperware of popcorn in his other hand, his hound tied up at home with a frozen peanut butter Kong to keep him busy. She was already there, the blanket spread out on the grass, the cooler sitting next to it, her feet bare, a flannel shirt tied around her waist even though the air was still warm. They sat for an hour, watching the sun dip below the Columbia, talking about nothing and everything, the current gurgling loud enough to drown out the noise from the fair two miles away. When the first firework exploded overhead, bright red painting the water pink, she leaned her shoulder against his, soft and warm, and he didn’t flinch. He rested his hand on top of hers where it was sitting on the blanket between them, her fingers curling loosely around his.
He didn’t look up at the sky when the gold and blue bursts lit up the dark, too busy counting the tiny silver freckles across the back of her hand where the firelight hit it.
