Manny Ruiz, 62, spent four years avoiding every town event within a 20-mile radius of his small Oregon home. The retired USPS route supervisor still wore his faded navy work jacket every day, the cuffs frayed at the edges from decades of grabbing mail sacks, a faint scar wrapping around his left wrist from the time he slipped off the back of his truck in an ice storm 12 years prior. His only reason for showing up to the annual harvest street fair that crisp October evening was his 7-year-old granddaughter, who’d begged him for a caramel apple dipped in peanuts before she went home with her mom. He’d grabbed the sticky treat, was already halfway to his beat-up Ford F-150, when he turned the corner too fast and ran straight into someone carrying a steaming mug of spiced cider.
The cider sloshed over the rim, splattering warm, sweet liquid across his wrist. Before he could mumble an apology, a woman’s hand wrapped around his forearm, dabbing at the damp spot with a crumpled linen napkin. He froze. She was close enough that he could smell cinnamon on her sweater and the dry, familiar scent of old paper clinging to her jeans, her thumb brushing the raised edge of his wrist scar for half a beat before she seemed to notice she was holding on. She pulled back a fraction, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she saw him staring. She was Clara, 58, the woman who’d opened the used bookstore on Main Street six months prior, the one he’d caught himself glancing at through the shop window every time he drove past to pick up his grandkid from school.
He hesitated. Before he could talk himself out of it, he followed her to her small booth at the edge of the fair, lined with stacks of used westerns, 90s cookbooks, and dog-eared poetry collections. She handed him a fresh mug of cider, warm enough to seep through the paper cup to his palms, and they sat on folding chairs under a strand of gold string lights. Their knees brushed under the tiny folding table every time one of them shifted. She teased him about still wearing his USPS jacket three years after retirement, and he teased her about marking up the first edition westerns with little notes in the margins like she was grading high school essays. She leaned in every time he talked, like she actually cared about the story he was telling about the time a stray golden retriever followed him on his route for three weeks, and he found himself laughing so hard he snort-laughed, something he hadn’t done since Elena got sick.
The first firework went off over the fairgrounds, painting the sky bright red, and the crowd around them cheered. Manny didn’t look up. He was staring at the little gold flecks in her eyes, the way the string lights caught the silver streak in her dark hair, the faint smudge of ink on her left cheek from stamping book covers that afternoon. She tilted her head, grinning, and wiped a fleck of caramel from his lower lip with her thumb. “You gonna kiss me or keep staring at me like I’m a misprinted first edition you can’t afford?” she said.
For half a second, the guilt hit him sharp, right in the chest. He thought of the crumpled photo of Elena he kept tucked in his jacket pocket, the way she’d told him two weeks before she died that he was too stubborn to let himself be happy after she was gone, that if he found someone who made him snort-laugh again, he’d be an idiot to walk away. He leaned in, slow, so she could pull back if she wanted, and kissed her. She tasted like spiced cider and peppermint lip balm, her hand tangling in the short gray hair at the back of his head, and he forgot about the crowd, the fireworks, the caramel apple melting in his hand.
When they pulled back, she laughed, wiping a smudge of lip balm off his chin with her napkin. He asked her if she wanted to get pancakes at the diner on Main Street the next morning, the one with the blueberry syrup Elena used to love, and she said yes, as long as he brought his copy of *The Ox-Bow Incident* so she could write her phone number in the margin. He walked her to her car an hour later, carrying her box of leftover books for her, and she squeezed his bicep when he opened her driver’s side door for her. He stood on the sidewalk long after she drove away, the caramel apple long discarded in a trash can, the crumpled napkin with her messy scrawled phone number tucked into his jacket pocket right next to the photo of Elena. He reached up, touched the spot on his chin where her thumb had brushed the caramel off, and smiled without that familiar twist of guilt sitting heavy in his stomach.
