Elwood “Woody” Rainer, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher who sold custom cutting boards out of his garage for extra cash, had claimed the same back booth at The Rusty Tap for weekly trivia night for seven straight years. No one ever sat across from him. The regulars knew better. He’d spent eight years carefully walling off his routine after his wife Diane died of breast cancer, stubbornly rejecting every set-up, every invitation to cookouts, every well-meaning nudge to “get back out there” as a nuisance. His only flaw, if you asked the few people still close to him, was that he’d turned being a hermit into a competitive sport.
The night of the small town fall festival wrap-up, the bar was so packed he almost turned right back around to his quiet garage and a six pack of Pabst, but the booth was open, so he slid in, set his truck keys on the sticky vinyl, and flagged the bartender for his usual. Two minutes later, a woman in a well-worn cream cable knit sweater and scuffed work boots pulled out the chair across from him, her leather jacket brushing his forearm as she leaned to set her tote on the floor. The scent of lavender and old cedar wrapped around him, sharp and warm enough to make him sit up straight, ready to tell her to find another spot, until she looked up.
It was Mara. Diane’s younger cousin. He hadn’t seen her since the funeral, when she’d hugged him tight and handed him a stack of Diane’s favorite old poetry books she’d found in their grandma’s attic. He’d thought about those books, and her, more times than he’d ever admit to anyone, guilt coiling tight in his chest every time. She was 58, had spent the last 20 years restoring rare books in Chicago, he remembered, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she realized who he was.
“Woody? I thought that was you. Sorry, every other table’s taken, I can move if you want,” she said, already half standing, and the words were out of his mouth before he thought about it: “Stay. We can team up. These trivia questions are garbage half the time, I could use a second brain.”
She sat back down, grinning, and when their knees brushed under the table as she adjusted her position, he didn’t shift away. The bar hummed around them, the jukebox spitting old George Strait, the smell of fried pickles and burnt popcorn thick in the air, and for the first time in years, he didn’t feel like he was just waiting for the night to be over. They bickered playfully over a question about 1970s table saw models, her laugh loud and bright when he admitted he still had the same saw Diane had bought him for their 20th anniversary in his garage, and when they got the final 90s country question right, beating the regular team that had won three months straight, she high fived him so hard their palms stung, her thumb brushing the rough callus on his knuckle from planing wood for three hours earlier that day.
He felt the pull of guilt then, sharp and familiar, the voice in his head hissing that this was wrong, that she was Diane’s cousin, that he should be better than this. It must have shown on his face, because her grin softened, and she leaned across the table, her elbow brushing his beer bottle. “Diane used to call me every month, you know. Complain that you were working too hard, that you never let anyone take care of you. Said if anything ever happened to her, she was tasking me with dragging you out of your workshop at least once a week.”
The guilt dissolved so fast he almost laughed. Of course Diane would have planned that. She’d always thought Mara was the only person as stubborn as he was.
They cashed in the $50 bar tab for two more drinks, sat there until the crowd thinned out, swapping stories about Diane’s terrible cooking, about the book restoration project she was running at the small town library she’d moved back to run six months prior, about the cutting board he was making for the local food bank auction. When the bartender flipped on the overhead lights to signal closing, he walked her to her car, holding his ratty plaid flannel over her head when the light drizzle picked up, the fabric of her sweater soft against his side when they huddled close.
She stopped at her driver’s side door, twisted a strand of gray-streaked auburn hair behind her ear, then tugged gently on the collar of his t-shirt to pull him down for a kiss. It was slow, soft, tasted like cherry hard seltzer and peppermint, and when she pulled back, she slid a scrap of library checkout slip with her number scrawled on it into his jacket pocket. “Breakfast tomorrow? I know a diner that makes pancakes as big as your head. Diane loved it.”
He nodded, watching her get in her car and pull out of the parking lot, before he climbed into his own truck, the slip of paper warm through the lining of his pocket. He turned the key, the radio flicking on to a George Strait deep cut, and instead of turning left toward his quiet, empty house, he turned right, toward the all-night grocery store, to pick up the blueberries she’d offhandedly mentioned she liked on her pancakes.
