He spotted her before she spotted him, and his first instinct was to duck behind the stack of plastic cup sleeves by the bar. Marnie Hale, 52, the county’s new public health nurse, was the only person in town who’d seen him vulnerable in the last decade—three months prior, he’d come in for a shingles vaccine, fainted dead away ten seconds after the needle went in, and woken up with his head in her lap, her cool hand pressed to his forehead. He’d bolted before she could even hand him his aftercare paperwork, and had gone out of his way to avoid her at the grocery store, the hardware shop, every local spot they both frequented, mortified that he’d looked that weak in front of a woman he’d thought was stunning the second she walked into the exam room. The professional line between them felt too thick to cross, too taboo to even acknowledge, and he’d written the whole thing off as a stupid, embarrassing blip.
She saw him then, her face lighting up in a grin, and she cut through the crowd of fairgoers like she had a direct line to his spot by the post. She wasn’t wearing the scrubs he’d only ever seen her in, for once—she had on cutoff jean shorts that showed off a smattering of freckles across her thighs, a faded Willie Nelson tee with a hole at the hem, and scuffed white canvas sneakers. She smelled like coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum when she leaned in to yell over the band, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he felt the heat of her skin through his thin work shirt. “I was hoping I’d run into you,” she said, her voice warm in his ear. “I saw your birdhouses at the 4H booth earlier. I’ve been wanting one for my porch, but you kept vanishing every time I tried to flag you down.”
He shifted his weight, his face heating up. “Sorry about that,” he said, and before he could stop himself, he added, “I was embarrassed about fainting at your clinic.” She laughed, loud and unselfconscious, and when a kid darted past chasing a cotton candy cone, she stumbled, her knuckles grazing his jaw as she caught herself. He reached out automatically, his palm landing on the soft, warm skin of her waist just above the waistband of her shorts, and he held on for two beats too long, his skin buzzing like he’d grabbed a live wire. His head was screaming that this was wrong, that she’d been his medical provider, that he was too broken, too much of a mess to be flirting with anyone, let alone someone who’d seen him passed out cold on an exam table. But the part of him that had been dormant for 15 years, the part that wanted something that wasn’t guilt or work or quiet loneliness, was screaming louder.
“Half the men over 50 in this county faint after that shot,” she said, like she could read his thoughts, and she didn’t step away when he didn’t move his hand. “You wouldn’t believe how many of them act like I caught them stealing candy from a baby afterward. It’s not a big deal. I get it, y’know? I carry stupid embarrassment around all the time too.” The band shifted to a slow, twangy cover of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”, and she tilted her head, the golden light catching the silver streaks in her blonde hair and the small hoop earring in her left cartilage. “You dance?” she asked.
He hesitated. He hadn’t danced since his wedding, hadn’t even wanted to. But she was looking at him like she didn’t think he was broken, like she didn’t care that he’d fainted in her office, like she saw the part of him that still liked building birdhouses and listening to old Cash records and hiking the trail where Jax died every year on his birthday. He’d spent so long disgusted with himself for wanting anything that felt good, for thinking he deserved someone who looked at him like that, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be seen. “I haven’t danced in 15 years,” he said, but he already was letting go of the post, already was slipping his hand into hers. Her hand was smaller than his, with a tiny scar on her index finger from a dog bite she got when she was working in a Phoenix ER during the 2021 COVID surge, she told him as they walked to the small patch of grass by the tent. She’d moved to Montana after that, she said, because she couldn’t stand looking at the empty hospital beds every day, couldn’t stand carrying the weight of all the people she couldn’t save.
He didn’t say anything, just pulled her close, his hand on her hip, hers looped around his shoulder. They swayed off-beat, no one watching them, everyone else too busy yelling along to the music or shoving fried cheese curds in their mouths. She leaned her forehead against his for a second, and he could feel her breath warm against his cheek. “We don’t have to carry all that weight alone, y’know,” she said, so quiet he almost didn’t hear it over the music.
The song ended a minute later, and she pulled back, grinning, and wiped a stray fleck of sawdust off the shoulder of his shirt that he hadn’t even noticed was there. “C’mon,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Let’s go get a plate of onion rings, then you can take me back to your workshop so I can pick out a birdhouse design.” He nodded, tossed his empty IPA cup into the trash can by the post, and laced his fingers through hers as they walked through the crowd, the fairy lights strung between the pines glinting off the silver hoops in her ears.
