Ray Voss, 58, retired electric lineman, still wore the frayed navy co-op flannel even on 82-degree August afternoons, the left cuff frayed where his late wife Linda used to yank it to get his attention when he rambled about transformer specs. He’d let his sister drag him to the county’s first full post-pandemic street fair, bailing the second she tried to introduce him to the widow from her Bible study, ducking behind the craft cider tent when he saw her scanning the crowd for him.
The air smelled like fried onions and cherry snow cone syrup, the tinny jingle of the Ferris wheel mixing with the chatter of kids chasing each other with glow sticks. The woman running the tent, Clara Bennett, 54, leaned over the rough plywood counter, wiping a mug with a checkered dish towel, and smirked. “You hiding from Marnie again? She cornered me at the grocery store last week asking if I thought you were ‘available’.”
Ray’s neck went hot. He’d avoided Clara since he’d fixed the power at her cottage during the winter ice storm, told himself it was because she was the new hippie transplant from Seattle who sold “artisanal cider” for $8 a pint, not because he’d replayed the way she’d smiled at him when he’d turned down her offer of payment three times that night. He mumbled something about the beer line being too long, and she slid a sample cup across the counter, their knuckles brushing when he grabbed it. He smelled cedar shampoo and fermented pear on her, the callus on her index finger from pressing cider catching on the back of his hand.
He sat on the splintered picnic bench outside the tent, sipping the spiced cider, and they talked for 45 minutes, no awkward lulls, no forced mentions of dead spouses or ex-husbands at first, just complaints about the town’s useless road crew, stories about the time he’d climbed a pole in a thunderstorm to fix a line for the nursing home, her stories of working COVID ICU in New York in 2020, the way she’d moved to town to be near her newborn grandson after her divorce finalized. He tried to leave twice, told himself he was being disrespectful to Linda, that the small town gossip mill would have them engaged by Sunday breakfast, but each time she’d offer him another sample, lean in a little closer, her knee brushing his when she sat down next to him to rest her feet.
When the tent closed at 9, she asked him to help carry two heavy boxes of empty cider jugs to her pickup parked at the edge of the fairgrounds. The bottom of one box split halfway to the truck, and he grabbed for it, his hand landing firm on her waist to steady her when she stumbled backward. She didn’t step away, just turned to him, her face lit up by the string lights strung between the food trucks, and said she’d noticed him staring at her at the town hall meetings, at the gas station, hadn’t said anything because she knew how hard it was to let yourself want something after you thought you’d lost the right to it.
He didn’t say anything for a second, the guilt coiling tight in his chest, the memory of Linda’s laugh when he’d brought her fried Oreos at this same fair 22 years earlier mixing with the warm buzz of the cider in his veins. He told her he’d spent 7 years thinking grief was the only way to honor Linda, that he’d felt like a traitor every time he caught himself looking at her. She brushed a fleck of sawdust off his flannel shirt, her palm resting on his chest for a beat, and said Linda would probably kick his ass for wasting so much time being lonely.
They walked back to the fairgrounds after loading the truck, and she bought a fried Oreo from the food truck by the gate, splitting it with him, the powdered sugar sticking to her lower lip. The first firework went off over the cornfield at the edge of town, painting the sky bright pink, and he wiped the sugar off her chin with his thumb, his hand lingering on her jaw for a second before he pulled it away. She leaned into his side, her shoulder pressed firm to his, and they stood there watching the rest of the show, no plans, no promises, just the crack of the fireworks and the sweet taste of sugar and spiced cider on his tongue.
