Ray Voss, 58, retired lineman with a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 line fire and a habit of turning down every dinner invite his sister shoves his way, had ducked into the county fair beer tent 12 minutes prior to escape his granddaughter’s relentless begging for a third ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. He propped one scuffed work boot on the lower rung of the picnic table, cold IPA sweating through its plastic cup into the thick callus on his palm, and tuned out the tinny pop blaring from the ride speakers in favor of watching a group of teens race past with cotton candy dyed neon blue. The fair was the first big community event the western Ohio town had run without masking or capacity limits in three years, and the air hummed with that giddy, half-frantic energy of people starved for unplanned casual contact.
He didn’t recognize her at first when she slid onto the bench across from him, until she laughed, loud and brassy, the exact same laugh she’d had at 16 when he’d caught her sneaking a beer out of the work crew cooler during the 1997 holiday food drive. Lila Marlow, now 42, his old foreman’s only daughter, ran the town’s no-kill animal rescue, and she’d cut her dark hair short since he’d last seen her, a bright streak of silver slicing through the left side just above her ear. She was wearing cutoffs scuffed at the knees and a faded rescue volunteer tee, work boots caked in mud from a morning feral cat trap run, and she leaned forward to grab a napkin off the table so fast her forearm brushed his, warm and calloused from hauling dog crates and wrangling skittish strays. He smelled coconut shampoo and fried funnel cake on her, and his throat went dry for a second, the rigid voice in his head immediately snapping that this was wrong, that he’d known her when she was still in high school, that he was supposed to be still mourning Carol, not staring at the way her dimples popped when she grinned.
“Voss, right? You still owe me 5 bucks for the root beer I bought you when you blew out your knee on that west side line job in 2007,” she said, tapping the faint scar on his knee through his jeans before he could pull back. He sputtered, half indignant, half flustered, and insisted he’d paid her back, left it in her dad’s lunch box the next day. She waved him off, leaning back against the bench, her knee brushing his under the table, no move to pull away. She told him she’d been asking about him for months, that his sister volunteered at the rescue and complained constantly that he spent every night alone on his couch eating frozen bean burritos and replaying 90s Cincinnati Reds games. He felt his face heat up, annoyed at his sister, more annoyed that the thought of Lila asking after him made his chest feel light, like it hadn’t since Carol died seven years prior.
He told himself to leave, to go back to his granddaughter, to stop indulging a stupid, inappropriate crush that was never going to go anywhere. Instead, he let her drag him over to the rescue’s booth at the edge of the fair grounds, where half a dozen squirming rescue puppies yipped behind a plastic pen. She knelt down to pick up a three-month-old hound mix with one floppy white ear, and when he knelt next to her, his shoulder pressed solidly to hers, the puppy squirmed in her arms and licked both their hands at the same time, their fingers brushing right where the scar on his forearm curved over his wrist. He froze for a second, ready to pull back, but she held his eye contact, no hesitation, her thumb brushing the edge of his scar before she looked back at the puppy.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear, the distant whine of the Ferris wheel fading into the background. “That it’s weird, that you knew me when I was a kid, that you’re betraying Carol by even standing here right now. Your sister told me you still have her photo on the dash of your truck, that you haven’t been on a date since she passed.” He flinched, ready to snap that it was none of her business, that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Carol and I used to volunteer together at the food bank, remember? She told me once if you ever started moping around the house after she was gone, I had permission to kick your ass until you got out and lived again. She knew she was sick two years before she told you, Voss. She planned for this.”
The words hit him like a punch to the chest, the rigid resistance he’d clung to for seven years cracking wide open. He’d spent so long convinced that any joy he found without Carol was a betrayal, that wanting anything for himself was selfish, that he’d forgotten how good it felt to talk to someone who knew him, who didn’t tiptoe around the subject of his wife like it was a shard of broken glass. He looked down at their hands, still tangled together with the puppy squirming between them, and for the first time in years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting to stay.
He asked her if she wanted to get a funnel cake after the fair closed, extra powdered sugar, like she used to sneak from the food trucks when she was a teen. She laughed, that same brassy laugh, and said yes, but only if he let her bring the hound puppy back to his place afterward, so she could make sure he wasn’t lying about having a fenced backyard for foster dogs. He nodded, already reaching for his wallet to buy the two tickets for the funnel cake stand, his fingers brushing hers again when she handed him a napkin to wipe the puppy slobber off his wrist.
The sun dipped below the grandstand, painting the sky pale pink and tangerine, and his granddaughter yelled his name from across the fair grounds, waving a lopsided stuffed bear she’d won at the ring toss. He waved back, still holding Lila’s hand, the puppy curled asleep in the crook of her other arm.
