Moe Pritchard, 62, vintage travel trailer restorer, wiped rain beading off the edge of a curly maple cutting board at the annual Hillsboro fall food truck rally. He’d set up a rickety folding table at the edge of the crowd, the air thick with the smell of fried green tomatoes, hickory-smoked brisket, and cinnamon spiced cider steaming from paper cups across the lot. He’d only agreed to sell the small batch of cutting boards he made in his workshop downtime to get his sister off her back; she’d been nagging him for months to get out of the shop and talk to someone who didn’t ask for estimates on water damage repair. He’d spent four years throwing himself into sanding dents out of 1970s Scamps and retiling Airstream bathrooms after his wife Ellie died of breast cancer, convinced any romantic connection at his age was either a pity play or a betrayal of the 38 years they’d shared.
He looked up when a shadow fell over the table, and his throat went dry. Lena Marquez. He’d recognize that little scar on her left eyebrow, the one she’d gotten falling off a horse as a kid, from the parent-teacher conference he’d had with her 21 years prior, back when he was still a full-time high school woodshop teacher. Her son Javi had carved a very detailed, very unapologetic phallus into the top of the school’s brand new oak workbench, and Moe had suspended him for three days, even though he’d secretly thought the craftsmanship was impressive for a 17 year old. Back then, he’d stared at the scuffed toes of his work boots the entire conference because he couldn’t stop looking at her mouth, the way it curled up at the corners even when she was pretending to be mad at her son. Now, silver streaks ran through her thick dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, she wore a faded Pearl Jam hoodie and rain boots caked in mud, and she was grinning like she knew exactly what he was thinking about.
She leaned in, her elbow brushing his when she reached to run a finger along the grain of the walnut cutting board at the front of the table, and he could smell lavender hand cream mixed with the cinnamon from the cider cup she was holding. “You probably don’t remember me,” she said, her voice low, a little rough from decades of smoking she’d quit ten years back, he’d learned at that old conference. “Lena Marquez. My son Javi gave you so much grief in your woodshop class.” He laughed, a little shaky, wiped his palm on the front of his oil-stained work jeans. “I remember. Told him if he put that much effort into a birdhouse he’d win the state fair. Did he ever stop carving dumb stuff into every flat surface he could find?” She threw her head back and laughed, and the sound made his chest feel light, like he’d forgotten what it felt like to make a woman laugh who wasn’t his sister or a customer happy with a finished trailer. “He owns a custom furniture shop in Portland now. Carves little hidden phalluses into the underside of every dining table he builds. Says he learned it from the best.”
The drizzle picked up, fat raindrops starting to splatter against the tablecloth, and she shifted closer to him, their shoulders pressing together under the edge of the pop-up canopy he’d strung up over the table. He was hyper aware of every point of contact: the heat of her arm through his flannel, the way her knee brushed his when a group of kids ran past splashing through puddles, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she talked about Javi’s 3 year old daughter who loved to draw on his scrap wood. Part of him was screaming that this was wrong, that Lena was off-limits, that he was 62 years old and still acting like a flustered kid with a crush, that he was betraying Ellie even thinking about kissing another woman. The other part of him was buzzing, the same thrill he used to get when he’d pull a forgotten 1970s Scamp out of a barn and realize it was in better shape than he’d dared to hope.
The canopy’s tie snapped suddenly, the plastic fabric flapping down and dumping a pile of accumulated rainwater right onto his stack of cutting boards. They both yelped, jumping back, and she grabbed his wrist to yank him out of the way of the next flood of water, her fingers cold and firm around his skin. The rain was coming down too hard to pack up properly, so he grabbed the handful of undamaged cutting boards, slung his work flannel over both their heads, and pulled her toward the awning of the closed independent bookstore half a block away. They huddled together under the flannel, his arm wrapped tight around her waist to keep her close, their chests pressed together when they stopped under the awning, both breathless from running through the rain.
She looked up at him, her cheeks pink from the cold, rain drops clinging to her eyelashes, and she didn’t pull away. “I had a crush on you back then, you know,” she said, so quiet he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of the rain hitting the awning. “Thought you were the sweetest man alive, even when you were chewing my kid out for defacing school property. I was divorced a year later, was gonna ask you out, saw you wearing your wedding ring and chickened out.” He didn’t overthink it. He leaned down and kissed her, his hand cupping the side of her face, her skin cold from the rain, her lips warm and tasting like cinnamon and apple cider. She kissed him back, tangling her free hand in the back of his hair, which was gray at the temples and messy from the wind, and for a second he forgot what year it was, forgot he was supposed to be grieving, forgot all the stupid rules he’d made for himself after Ellie died.
The rain slowed to a soft drizzle ten minutes later, and they walked to her pickup truck parked at the edge of the lot, their fingers brushing every few steps even though they didn’t hold hands, not yet. She fished a crumpled napkin out of her cup holder when he dropped his phone in a puddle fumbling to pull up his contacts, and their hands brushed when she handed it to him, her thumb grazing his knuckle for half a second that felt like an hour. They exchanged numbers, she told him she was in town for the week visiting Javi’s grandma, and asked him to meet her at the diner on Main Street for peach pie at 2 the next afternoon. He nodded, tucking the walnut cutting board she’d been admiring earlier under his arm; he’d grabbed it when they ran from the canopy, already planning to give it to her as a gift.
He waved when she pulled out of the parking lot, her honking twice out the window as she turned onto Main Street. The flannel he’d lent her was slung over her passenger seat, and he didn’t even care that he’d have to get it back from her later. He looked down at his phone, her name typed into his contacts, a little doodle of a phallus she’d drawn next to it as a joke. He didn’t even remember to be mad that half his cutting board stock had gotten soaked through in the rain.
