Cole Henderson, 58, retired electric lineman with a scar splitting his left eyebrow and a habit of ducking out of conversations that threaten to rock the small western Ohio town he’s lived in his whole life, leaned against the splintered wooden rail of the county fair beer tent, sweating through the collar of his faded John Deere work shirt. It was mid-August, the kind of heat that sat heavy in your lungs, thick with the smell of fried Oreos, diesel from the Ferris wheel, and the faint sour tang of spilled beer. The country cover band on the main stage was butchering a Garth Brooks deep cut, off key and too loud, and the line for the elephant ears snaked past the tomato contest booth where Cole had taken second place an hour earlier, his only loss in four years. He twisted the cap off a Pabst, took a long sip, and spotted her.
Lila Marlow, 42, the town’s new library director, was leaning against a folding table 10 feet away, manning the banned book pop-up the city council had tried to ban from the fair two weeks prior. Cole had avoided her for the first three days of the fair, partly because the entire town had been gossiping about her “radical” reading lists since she took the job six months earlier, and partly because when she was 16, she’d caught him sobbing in his pickup truck in the library parking lot two weeks after his wife left him for a roofing salesman from Dayton. He still cringed thinking about it. She was wearing cutoff denim overalls slung low on her hips, a thin white tank top underneath dotted with sweat, and work boots caked in mud from the fairgrounds. A group of church ladies from the First Baptist Church walked past, glowering, and Lila winked at them, lifting a copy of *The Bluest Eye* in a mock toast. Cole huffed a laugh before he could stop himself.
She looked over, caught his eye, and waved him over. He hesitated for three full seconds, then pushed off the rail, his boots crunching on discarded popcorn kernels and candy wrappers as he walked. “Heard you lost the tomato contest,” she said, grinning, as he stopped in front of the table, close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and the faint vanilla of the vape she kept tucked in her overalls pocket. “Your ex’s heirlooms beat you this year, huh?” “Don’t mention her,” he said automatically, no bite in it, and she laughed, loud and bright, over the noise of the band. He reached for a copy of *Lonesome Dove* stacked near the edge of the table, curious why anyone would try to ban it, and their hands brushed. Her palm was calloused, he noticed, from the community garden she ran on the weekends, and he felt a jolt shoot up his arm, fast and warm, before he pulled his hand back like he’d touched a live wire.
A group of teens rushed past, yelling, as the Ferris wheel lit up neon pink and blue, and one slammed into Cole’s back hard enough that he stumbled forward, his chest pressing against her shoulder for half a second. He could feel the heat of her skin through the thin tank top, freezing for a beat before stepping back, his face hot. He’d spent 12 years keeping his head down, avoiding attention, avoiding any situation that could get people talking, and here he was, pressed up against his ex-wife’s 42-year-old niece at a table full of banned books, half the town watching. He could feel the church ladies’ eyes on his back, could hear the diner gossips already making up stories about him being some pervert chasing a younger woman. The disgust he was supposed to feel, the shame, was there, but faint, drowned out by the way she was looking at him, like she didn’t care who was watching, like she saw the guy who’d snuck her westerns when she was 14 and the library wouldn’t let her check out “adult” books, not the sad guy crying in his truck, not the ex-husband everyone pitied.
“Got a shift end in 10 minutes,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, her thumb brushing the small scar above her left eyebrow, the one she got falling off his four-wheeler when she was 15, when he drove her to the ER and lied to her mom about how it happened. “Diner down the road still makes those peanut butter milkshakes you used to buy me after fishing trips. Wanna go?” He hesitated, running through the list of reasons to say no: the gossip, the age difference, the stupid unspoken rule that you don’t side with the woman fighting the church and city council, the rule that you don’t talk to your ex-wife’s family unless you have to. Then she smiled, the same lopsided grin she’d had as a kid, and he nodded.
