Russell Hale, 57, spent the last eight years perfecting the art of avoiding people. A retired high school woodshop teacher turned custom cutting board craftsman, he worked out of his garage seven days a week, only left the house for supply runs or early morning fishing trips, and still carried a tight, burning grudge against his ex-wife for walking out with their son’s favorite chess set he’d spent three months carving, no note, no explanation, just a half-empty coffee pot on the counter. He only showed up to the town’s summer block party because his 82-year-old next door neighbor left a six pack of his favorite hazy IPA on his porch at 2 p.m., scrawled on a napkin that the brisket truck was smoking 12-hour cuts, and if he didn’t show she’d leave dandelions in his mailbox all week.
He was leaning against the gnarled old oak by the tiki bar, half way through his second beer, pretending to scroll through his phone to avoid small talk with the couple from down the street, when a woman stepped sideways to avoid a kid on a neon pink bike, her bare shoulder brushing the exposed skin of his upper arm. He smelled jasmine and vanilla first, not the cloying, heavy rose perfume his ex wore for every holiday, then looked down.
She was Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one he’d only met three times when he was married, the one who’d sat through his son’s 10th birthday party laughing at his terrible dad jokes instead of rolling her eyes like the rest of his ex’s family. She was 51, a travel nurse passing through town for a two week assignment at the local clinic, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, silver hoop glinting in her left ear. She grinned when she saw his face, nodded at the thin, pale scar snaking up his left forearm, the one he got slicing a piece of walnut for that chess set he still ached over. “I’d know that scar anywhere. You cried when you dropped that chisel, remember? Told my nephew you’d fix it before his birthday.”
Russell’s jaw tightened first, old reflex kicking in, ready to deflect any comment tied to his ex or that part of his life. Then she leaned in a little closer, close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of gold in her brown eyes, and said, “I always thought she was an idiot, by the way. You were the only one in that whole damn family who ever fixed a leaky faucet or showed up to a kid’s soccer game without complaining the whole time.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he took a sip of beer. She reached out then, slow, like she was waiting for him to pull away, and plucked a fuzzy green caterpillar off the front of his worn Carhartt tee, her fingertips brushing the warm skin of his chest for half a second. He felt his ears burn, a stupid, fluttery feeling he hadn’t had since he was 16 and asked his first girlfriend to prom. They talked for 45 minutes, standing three inches apart, the noise of the block party fading into background static. She told him she’d bought one of his cutting boards from the general store three days prior, used it every morning to slice fresh peaches for her oatmeal, loved the way he’d carved a tiny bear into the corner of every board. He told her he’d started making them after the divorce, just to keep his hands busy, had sold 120 of them in the last year.
When the sun started to dip below the tree line, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she tilted her head, a little smirk playing on her lips, and said she was staying at her grandma’s old lake cabin ten minutes out of town, the bedroom window was stuck shut, and she’d pay him in a whole homemade peach pie if he’d come by to fix it. The voice in the back of his head screamed that this was wrong, that his ex would lose her mind if she found out, that he was crossing a line he’d spent eight years drawing hard and fast between himself and anyone connected to his old life. Then she slipped her hand into his, calloused from turning IVs and hauling travel bags, gave it a soft squeeze, and said, “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. It’s just a window. And pie.”
Russell nodded before he could overthink it. She handed him a cold peach seltzer from the cooler slung over her shoulder, their fingers lingering for two beats longer than necessary, and told him to follow her truck out to the cabin. He walked back to his beat up Ford F150 to grab his tool belt from the passenger seat, already half forgetting the heavy, sharp-edged grudge he’d carried for eight years like a too-heavy piece of hardwood slung over his shoulder.
