Moe Rinaldi propped his boot on the bar rail, swirling the last of his Old Style in a frosted mug still crusted with ice from the walk-in cooler. At 58, the retired vintage snowmobile restorer had spent most of the last four years holed up in the cabin he’d built with his late wife outside Duluth, only venturing into town once a week for the VFW fish fry and enough motor oil to keep his fleet of 1970s Ski-Doos running. He’d dragged his award-winning 1972 Elan to the annual regional show that afternoon, taken first place in the stock class, and had planned to head straight home until the snow started coming down in thick, wet flakes that stuck to the brim of his faded Carhartt hat. The bar smelled like fried cheese curds and hickory smoke from the grill in back, the jukebox spitting out Johnny Cash deep cuts loud enough to rattle the salt shakers on the counter.
He looked up when the front door banged open, a gust of cold wind sweeping in with a woman carrying a stack of neon-pink flyers tucked under one arm. He recognized her immediately: Lila Marquez, his wife’s second cousin, 49, who’d moved up from Chicago six months prior to care for her ailing mom. He’d only met her once before, at his wife’s funeral, where she’d sobbed so hard she couldn’t catch her breath and he’d handed her his well-worn linen handkerchief without saying a word. She spotted him halfway across the room, broke into a wide, gap-toothed smile, and wove through the crowd of snowmobile enthusiasts to slide onto the stool next to him. Her shoulder brushed his when she leaned in to yell over the music, the fabric of her flannel shirt soft against his work-worn flannel, and he tensed for half a second before relaxing. She said she’d seen his Elan on the show floor earlier, thought the custom paint job he’d spent three months hand-sanding was the best thing there, and he found himself grinning like a kid who’d just gotten his first sled.
When she reached across the bar to grab the peanut bowl between them, her cold, flour-dusted hand brushed his. He flinched, not from discomfort, but from the sharp, unexpected jolt of heat that crawled up his forearm, and she laughed, tucking a strand of dark hair that had fallen loose from her braid behind her ear. She had a smudge of chocolate on her left cheek, a thin scar snaking across her wrist from a baking accident when she was 12, and her nail polish was chipped a bright cherry red. He’d spent the last four years convincing himself any kind of romantic attention was a betrayal, that letting someone new in would erase the 32 years he’d had with his wife, and he sat rigid for 20 minutes, warring between the urge to lean closer and the urge to grab his keys and bolt. She didn’t push, just told him stories about her mom’s terrible sense of direction, the way her cat kept stealing her baking supplies, the time she’d tried to ride a snowmobile as a teen and crashed into a snowbank. When she rolled her eyes at her own story, he caught a flash of the same stubborn, playful spark his wife had, and the tight knot in his chest loosened a little.
The bartender yelled out 20 minutes later that the county plows had been delayed, that the side roads were already iced over and wouldn’t be passable for at least three hours. Lila groaned, saying her Honda had bald tires and she lived 10 minutes out on a dirt road that would be a sheet of ice by now. Moe offered her a ride before he could think better of it, said his 4×4 had snow chains and he knew that road like the back of his hand. She thanked him, stacking her flyers on the bar and tucking her scarf tight around her neck before following him outside. The snow was coming down so hard the streetlights glowed fuzzy gold, the parking lot already covered in a three-inch layer of slush and ice. She stepped off the curb and slipped, her boot sliding out from under her, and he caught her by the waist, his hands firm through the thick puffer coat she was wearing, pulling her flush against him to steady her.
For three seconds, neither of them moved. He could smell vanilla lotion and peppermint lip balm on her, feel the fast thud of her heart through their coats, and when she tilted her chin up to look at him, her dark eyes glinting in the streetlight, he didn’t pull away. She kissed him first, quick, tentative, like she was afraid he’d push her off, and when he kissed her back, slow and soft, she sighed against his mouth, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. He didn’t care that a couple of guys from the show were hooting from the bar porch, didn’t care that a tiny voice in the back of his head was screaming that this was wrong, that she was family, that he shouldn’t be doing this. All he cared about was the way her fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, the way she laughed when a snowflake landed on his eyelash, the quiet, warm weight of her against him when the cold had been his only constant for four years.
He opened the passenger door of his truck for her, cranked the heat up as high as it would go, and waited for her to buckle her seatbelt before pulling out of the parking lot. She reached across the center console halfway down the road, laced her cold fingers through his calloused ones, and didn’t let go. He turned onto her dirt road, the snow chains clanking softly against the tires, the radio playing a Patsy Cline song his wife had loved, and he didn’t feel guilty. He felt light, like the weight he’d been carrying around for four years had lifted just a little, and he squeezed her hand when she hummed along to the chorus.
