Cole Hargrove, 58, retired lineman with 32 years of scaling utility poles through Ohio blizzards and thunderstorms, hasn’t pursued so much as a coffee date since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer seven years prior. His only consistent flaw, per his grown son who’d moved to Austin last spring, is that he’s stubborn enough to punish himself for being alive long after everyone else has told him he’s allowed to stop. He spends most weeknights at The Rusty Spur, sipping $3 draft Pabst and yelling at the TV when the Reds blow a save, and weekends volunteering at the veteran’s food pantry downtown.
The small town’s annual summer street fair rolled around mid-July, the same week the city council voted 3-2 to let the public library host drag story hour for kids, turning the usually sleepy main drag into a mess of yelling protestors, harried event volunteers, and families ducking past the conflict to grab cotton candy and ride the rickety Ferris wheel. Cole had avoided the fair for three years running, but the pantry was running a fundraiser selling pulled pork sandwiches, so he’d showed up at 10 a.m. in his faded gray lineman flannel, a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 arc flash peeking out under the cuff.
He’d just grabbed a sandwich for himself during a lull, slathered in spicy barbecue sauce, when a woman in a vintage denim jacket covered in book-themed patches bumped into his side, sending a dollop of sauce dripping down the front of his flannel. She apologized immediately, her voice warm and rough from years of reading aloud to kids, and pulled a crumpled paper napkin from her canvas tote before he could even wave off the mess. Her hand brushed his when he reached for the napkin, her palm lingering half a second on his sternum as she dabbed at the sauce, and he caught the faint scent of lavender hand lotion and lemon seltzer off her. He glanced down, noticed the callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages, the chipped navy polish on her nails, the silver hoops in her ears that caught the sun just right.
Her name was Maren, 49, the head librarian who’d spearheaded the story hour push, and she rolled her eyes when he gestured at the group of protestors yelling across the street about “corrupting kids.” “I’ve had three people spit at my feet today,” she said, leaning against the picnic table next to him, close enough that he could hear the crinkle of the tote bag against her hip when she shifted. “I’m this close to ditching the rest of my shift and eating an entire funnel cake by myself.”
Cole’s first instinct was to make an excuse and walk away. He’d spent seven years drawing a hard line around his life, no new people, no mess, no risk of hurting anyone or being hurt again, and she was nine years younger than him, tangled up in the kind of small-town drama he’d spent his whole career avoiding. He told himself he was being a pathetic old creep for even noticing how her eyes crinkled when she smiled, for feeling the echo of her hand on his chest long after she’d pulled it away. But then she laughed at his story about a squirrel shorting a substation and knocking out power to half the town on Christmas Eve 2019, snorting a little when she laughed, and he found himself offering to split that funnel cake with her.
They sat on the curb at the edge of the fairgrounds as the sun went down, passing the sugar-dusted cake back and forth, talking about everything and nothing: the way Linda used to make peach pie every Fourth of July, the way Maren’s husband had died of a sudden heart attack four years prior, the stupidity of adults yelling at each other over a bunch of kids getting to dress up and listen to picture books. The fireworks show started at 9:30, loud bursts of red and blue lighting up the sky, and when a particularly loud boom went off, she leaned into him, her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep, tilting her head up to look at him instead of the sky.
He didn’t pull away. He brushed a fleck of powdered sugar off her cheek, his thumb grazing the soft line of her jaw, and she didn’t flinch. “I’ve been an idiot for hiding out for seven years,” he said, quiet enough that only she could hear it over the noise of the crowd and the fireworks. She smiled, and her hand came to rest on his knee, warm through the fabric of his jeans. “I’ve been waiting for someone who doesn’t want to yell about things all the time,” she said.
After the last firework faded, they walked the three blocks back to his beat-up 2007 Ford F-150, her hand brushing his every few steps, neither of them making a move to hold hands quite yet. She stopped at the passenger door, her bag slung over her shoulder, and said she had a first edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls at her house that he’d probably love, invited him over for coffee tomorrow afternoon to look at it. He nodded, fumbling for the truck keys in his pocket, and before she climbed in, she leaned in and pressed a quick, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, the taste of powdered sugar and lemon on her lips.
He leaned against the bed of the truck as she drove away, sipping the half-full can of lemon seltzer she’d left on the hood, watching her taillights fade around the corner of Main Street. He pulled the crumpled napkin from his flannel pocket, running his thumb over the smudged digits of her phone number before pulling out his own flip phone to save it.
