Elias Voss, 53, has restored over 400 vintage arcade and pinball machines in the 12 years since his ex-wife moved to Arizona and left him with the converted garage shop he’d built as a side hustle. His biggest flaw, if you ask his part-time assistant Javi, is that he’d rather solder a faulty joystick for three hours straight than make small talk with anyone who doesn’t know the difference between a Galaga and a Space Invaders cabinet. He only showed up to the neighborhood summer block party because Javi threatened to hide all his replacement 1980s pinball flipper rubbers if he bailed again.
He’d planned to stay 15 minutes, max. Grab a can of hazy IPA from the keg stand, nod at three people he recognized, then hightail it back to his shop to keep working on a 1979 Star Trek pinball machine the local public library had commissioned for their teen game night. The air reeked of grilled brats and citronella candles, a neighborhood cover band was slurring their way through a Journey deep cut, and half the kids on the block were running around with neon popsicle drips down their bare legs. He’d just polished off his beer and was turning toward the sidewalk when he bumped into someone hard enough to make his empty can clatter to the asphalt.
It was Mara, the new head librarian who’d picked up the fixed Frogger machine from his shop a month prior. She was 49, wore faded black overalls over a soft gray flannel, had a streak of silver in her dark curly hair that caught the golden hour sun like a shard of mirror. He’d barely spoken to her when she’d dropped off the Frogger, too focused on making sure the high score function worked properly to even make eye contact. But now she was grinning, holding a paper plate piled high with potato salad, and her elbow was pressed warm against his bicep where they’d bumped.
“Was starting to think you’d never stick around an event long enough for me to say hi,” she said, leaning in a little so she didn’t have to yell over the band. Her breath smelled like lemonade and mint, and he could feel the heat of her shoulder through his worn work shirt. He froze for half a second, his first instinct to make an excuse about having to get back to a repair. That’s what he always did. His ex had spent 18 years telling him his “silly machine hobby” was a waste of time, that he should be out networking to make real money, that talking to people who worked in “frivolous” fields like libraries was for losers who didn’t want to get ahead. Even 12 years out, that voice still hummed in the back of his head, sharp and snappish, telling him he had no business standing here talking to a woman who spent her days around books and teens and fun.
But he didn’t leave. He laughed, scratched the back of his neck, said he was usually too busy with repairs to hang around neighborhood events. She asked about the Star Trek pinball machine, and he found himself rambling about the faulty score display, the way the original art had faded almost to nothing on the back glass, how he’d tracked down a retired graphic designer in Ohio who’d made the original decals to print a new set. She didn’t glance over his shoulder to talk to someone else. She nodded, asked follow up questions, even laughed when he told her about the time a kid spilled a slushie in the Frogger cabinet he’d dropped off, and he’d had to take the whole thing apart and dry every circuit board with a hair dryer.
They’d been standing there for 40 minutes when a group of teens running with water balloons slammed into his back. He stumbled forward, grabbed her elbow to keep from knocking her plate out of her hand, and their fingers brushed when she steadied herself on his wrist. For a second, no one spoke. The band faded into background noise, the sound of kids yelling felt far away. She didn’t pull away. The old voice in his head screamed that this was wrong, that he was going to mess this up, that he should run back to his shop and hide behind his soldering iron before he got hurt again. But the rest of him, the part that had been alone for 12 years, the part that missed having someone to ramble to about pinball decals, was louder.
He told her he’d been avoiding people since his ex left, that he was scared he’d forgotten how to talk to anyone who didn’t care about arcade machine wiring. She smiled, soft, and said she’d noticed he always left places early, that she’d asked three different neighbors who he was after he dropped off the Frogger, because she’d thought he was cute even when he was covered in solder fumes and muttering about faulty wiring.
The sun was dipping below the rooflines by the time he asked her if she wanted to walk back to his shop to see the Star Trek pinball machine before he delivered it to the library the next week. She said yes, wiped a smudge of mustard off his cheek with her thumb before she tossed her empty paper plate in the trash can by the grill. They walked down the sidewalk side by side, the noise of the block party fading behind them. Their hands brushed twice as they walked, slow, before he laced his fingers through hers for three full houses, then let go when a group of kids on bikes zoomed past. She nudged his shoulder with hers, and he didn’t even try to hide his smile when she asked him if he had any extra quarters so she could beat his high score on Frogger when they got to the shop.
