Roy Pacheco, 62, leans against the dented side of his 1998 Ford F-150, sweating through the armpits of his faded Carhartt work shirt, a half-drunk can of Pabst in one hand. He’d spent the morning stripping rust off a 1972 Coleman camp stove for a client, and his knuckles are still crusted with fine steel wool dust, faint grease stains snaking up his wrists. He hates the annual West Boise neighborhood block party, hates the forced small talk, the screaming kids chasing each other with water guns, the way every third person asks when he’s going to “finally settle down again”. He only shows up for the pork tamales his next door neighbor, Marisol, cooks every year, stashed in a crockpot by her grill.
The air smells like charred bratwurst, citronella candles, and cut grass, thick and heavy with mid-July heat. He’s just about to slip away to Marisol’s grill when he spots her, the new woman who moved into the blue bungalow across the street two weeks prior. She’s carrying a stack of chipped ceramic coasters, handing them out to every group she stops at, her canvas sundress the color of wild sunflowers, streaks of gray woven through her loose brown braid. He’d only waved at her once before, from his driveway, when she was hauling a pottery wheel up her front steps, and she’d grinned and held up a mug covered in blue glaze splotches in response.
She trips over a cracked section of sidewalk ten feet from his truck, and he moves before he thinks, stepping forward to catch her, his calloused hand wrapping around her bare forearm for three full seconds. He can feel the soft, sun-warmed fuzz of her skin, the faint raised scar curving around her wrist, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, already mentally kicking himself for overstepping. She laughs, a low, throaty sound, and brushes a fleck of sidewalk dust off her dress. “Clumsy as hell,” she says, holding out a coaster, deep forest green with a tiny hand-carved moose in the corner. “I’m Elara. Make pottery for a living. Break twice as much as I sell, these days.”
Roy blinks, takes the coaster without thinking, his fingers brushing hers. He’s already prepping the polite, distant brush off he uses for anyone who tries to get close, the one that makes people leave him alone fast. But then she nods at the vintage canvas camp chair propped against his truck bed, the 1960s model he restored last winter, and asks if he takes it out on the trails. He finds himself talking before he can stop, telling her about the time he hiked 12 miles through a downpour in the Sawtooths to haul out an abandoned 1968 Aristocrat travel trailer someone left rotting off a fire road, about the way the rain had soaked through his jacket so bad his socks squelched for three days. He hasn’t told that story to anyone but his old hiking buddy in years.
Internal conflict kicks in hard, then. He’s disgusted with himself, the way his chest feels tight when she laughs at his story, the way he keeps glancing at the small smudge of clay under her left fingernail, the way she smells like cedar and lavender instead of the cloying, heavy perfume so many women his age wear to these events. He’s spent eight years convincing himself dating after 50 is just a scam, that everyone’s either looking for a caretaker or a quick cash grab, that he’s better off alone with his stoves and his trailers and his quiet weekends in the mountains. He should walk away right now, go get his tamales, hide in his garage for the rest of the night. But he can’t make his feet move.
The DJ set up by the park down the street cuts into Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues, loud and rough, and Elara’s face lights up. She grabs his wrist, her hand small and warm against his skin, and tugs him toward the small group of people swaying on the curb. He hesitates, half ready to pull away, but then she looks up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, and he lets her lead. They don’t dance properly, just sway a little to the beat, standing close enough that her shoulder brushes his chest every time she shifts her weight, the heat of her seeping through his thin shirt. She leans up to yell over the music, her mouth so close to his ear he can feel her warm breath against his neck, and says, “You don’t have to be so scared of letting people talk to you, you know. I can see you hovering over here like you’re waiting for someone to steal your truck.”
He freezes. No one’s called him out on that, not even Marisol, not in years. The flush creeping up his neck isn’t from the heat, for once. He doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods, and she laughs again, leaning back, her braid swinging over her shoulder. The song ends a minute later, and they stand there for a beat, neither of them stepping back, the noise of the block party fading into background static for a second.
He opens his mouth before he can overthink it, tells her he’s heading up to the Sawtooths next weekend to test out the Coleman stove he’d been working on that morning, that the spot he’s going has a view of the entire valley, that he’s got an extra camp chair. She says yes before he even finishes the sentence, grinning so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle. She scribbles her phone number on the back of a second coaster, blue with a pine tree carved into the edge, and presses it into his palm.
He watches her walk back to her house, her sundress swishing around her calves, as the sun dips below the rooflines, painting the sky pink and orange. Marisol yells from across the street, waving a paper plate stacked with tamales at him, and he waves back. He sets the green moose coaster on his truck’s fender, pulls out his phone to text his hiking buddy he’s bringing a guest, and smiles for the first time all summer.
