Hank Rainer, 58, retired high-voltage lineman, leaned his hip against the beer tent’s splintered wooden counter and twisted the cap off his third IPA of the afternoon. His left knee ached, leftover from a 2019 fall off a 60-foot pole outside Bend, and the Stetson he’d worn every day since his wife Eileen’s funeral 10 years prior cast a shadow over his eyes so he didn’t have to make small talk with the neighbors passing by. He’d driven 20 minutes into town for the annual summer street fair specifically for the fried onion rings and cold beer, and he’d gone out of his way to walk three booths down to avoid the library’s table, the same one he’d heckled at every town event for 12 years running. The board had rejected Eileen’s proposal for a western paperback collection two years before she died, and Hank was stubborn enough to hold a grudge longer than the Ponderosa pines on his property held their needles.
He reached for a napkin to wipe grease off his calloused fingers when another hand bumped his, warm, a little rough at the knuckles. He looked up, ready to snap, and found himself staring into the hazel eyes of Clara Bennett, 52, the library’s head librarian, the woman he’d spent a decade calling a stuck-up bureaucrat to anyone who’d listen. She was closer than he expected, her shoulder almost pressed to his, the scent of lavender hand lotion and lemon Pledge wrapping around him sharp enough to cut through the smell of fried dough and diesel from the fair rides. She wore a loose linen button-down unbuttoned at the collar, silver streaks running through the auburn braid slung over her shoulder, freckles dusting her nose that he’d never noticed before, because he’d never bothered to look her in the eye long enough.
“Hank Rainer,” she said, her voice lower than he’d assumed, no nasal, tight-laced tone he’d built up in his head, and she held his gaze so long his neck felt hot. “I’d know that scowl anywhere. I’ve been looking for you, actually.” He opened his mouth to make a snarky comment about library fines or book bans, the kind he usually pulled out at town halls, but she beat him to it. “I found Eileen’s old collection proposal in the archives last month. The board that rejected it? Half of them moved away years ago. I approved the budget for it three weeks ago, we launched it today. Named it after her.”
She nodded toward the library booth, where a stack of western paperbacks sat under a hand-painted sign with Eileen’s name on it, and he felt his face heat up, half embarrassment, half something warmer he didn’t want to name. Half the town was milling around 20 feet away, his fishing buddy Tom was manning the 4-H booth 10 feet from the library table, and if anyone saw him chatting with Clara it’d be the talk of the diner for three months straight. The thrill of that, the stupid, teenage taboo of doing something everyone you know would never expect, made his pulse pick up. He’d spent the last 10 years following the same routine: wake up, feed the chickens, fix fence, drink beer, go to bed. Nothing had shaken it up, not even when Tom tried to set him up with his sister-in-law two years prior.
“The fair closes in an hour,” she said, tilting her head, and she ran a finger along the edge of her beer cup so slow he couldn’t look away. “I brought the first edition of Hondo Eileen wrote a note in the margin of, the one she mentioned in her proposal. It’s back at the library. If you want to come see it. No one else will be there.” He hesitated for 10 full seconds, the part of him that held grudges for 12 years screaming to say no, to walk away, to keep his pride intact. The other part of him, the part that missed Eileen, the part that was bored of eating frozen dinners alone every night, won out. He nodded.
They snuck out the back of the fair grounds, taking the tree-lined side street to the library so no one would see them, the crickets chirping loud enough to cover the sound of their quiet laughter when she told him about the teen book club that kept sneaking smutty romance novels into the nonfiction section. The library was cool when they walked in, the air thick with the smell of old paper and the same lavender she wore, the front window’s stained glass casting rainbow streaks across the hardwood floors. She pulled the tattered copy of Hondo off the shelf behind the front desk, and when he flipped it open, he saw Eileen’s messy handwriting scrawled on the inside cover: For whoever finds this, give my stubborn Hank a kiss if he ever stops being mad long enough to come looking. He looked up, and she was standing so close he could feel her breath on his cheek, and he didn’t pull away when she leaned in, kissing him soft and slow, her hand resting on the side of his face, her fingers a little rough from turning pages all day, matching the calluses on his own hands from 36 years climbing poles.
They sat on the overstuffed couch in the western collection’s reading nook for an hour, flipping through the paperbacks, her feet propped on his lap, his hand resting loose on her ankle, no rush, no pressure to say or do anything they didn’t want to. The last of the summer sun slipped below the roof of the building across the street, painting the edges of her braid gold, and she told him about the plans she had to add a video collection of old western films next quarter, asked him if he wanted to help curate it. When she passed him a dog-eared copy of *The Sacketts*, his favorite L’Amour novel, his fingers brushed hers again, and this time he didn’t pull away.
