Ray Voss, 58, retired power lineworker, 12 years single after his wife left him for a retiree hiking group acquaintance, spends most days fixing vintage lawnmowers in his cinder block workshop on the edge of their small western Michigan town. He hates small talk, hates pointless community events, and hates the new mayor even more, so he only showed up to the fire department summer beer tent because his nephew had been sworn in a month prior and begged him to make an appearance. He’s leaning against a splintered cedar post, IPA sweating through the cuff of his faded 2019 storm response flannel, work boots caked in the same mud he tracked in from mowing that morning, avoiding eye contact with everyone he knows. He spots Clara Bennett across the tent, 52, mayor for eight months, the woman he’s left seven snarky comments under on the town Facebook page, the one who made him drop $1200 replacing the cracked sidewalk outside his workshop a month prior. He rolls his eyes, goes to turn away, but a group of drunk teens carrying jello shots slams into his back.
He stumbles forward, his left arm slamming into the soft curve of her waist before he can catch himself. The seltzer in her hand sloshes over the edge, drips onto her high-waisted jeans. He freezes, ready for the lecture, the public callout, the “do you know who I am” bit he’s heard other people say she pulls when she’s annoyed. She turns instead, wipes the wet spot off her thigh with the back of her hand, and smirks. Her hair’s pulled back in a messy ponytail, no blazer, no fancy heels, just scuffed white sneakers and a faded fire department t-shirt she must have picked up at the merch table. “Voss,” she says, loud enough to cut over the Luke Combs song blaring over the speakers. “Figured I’d run into you here. You left three comments on my sidewalk update last week calling it ‘tyranny for people who don’t have time to cater to Karen tourists who can’t watch their feet’.”
He flushes, mumbles an apology for bumping her, offers to buy her another seltzer. He doesn’t know why he offers. He should be walking away, telling her the rule was still garbage, going to sit with his nephew and the other guys he used to work with on the line crew. But she nods, follows him to the beer stand, and they end up leaning against the same post he was at before, a foot apart, close enough that he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the charcoal smoke from the brat grill 20 feet away, close enough that he can see the faint scar on her jaw from a bike crash when she was 16, she tells him, when he asks about it. People glance over, he can see the confused looks, the guys he used to work with snickering from the picnic table, but he doesn’t care as much as he thought he would.
She tells him she adjusted the sidewalk ordinance last Tuesday, exempted zoned workshop properties from the replacement rule, just hadn’t posted the update yet because she’d been busy organizing the fundraiser. “I saw your workshop when I drove out to the farm supply store last month,” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the roar of the crowd, her shoulder brushing his bicep when someone squeezes past behind her. “The crack was only on the edge by your driveway, no tourists even walk that far out. I felt bad I didn’t catch the exemption before you paid for the work.” He blinks, he’d spent three weeks bitching to anyone who would listen that she didn’t care about small business owners, that she only cared about the rich lake people on the other side of town. When she gestures to point out his nephew wrestling with another firefighter near the bonfire, her hand brushes his, and he feels the rough callus on her index finger, from gardening, she says, she grows heirloom tomatoes in her backyard every summer.
He doesn’t realize an hour has passed until his nephew yells his name, waves him over to take a group photo. He hesitates, then asks her if she hikes the north trail out by the state park. She lights up, says she’s been wanting to check out the overlook at the top but hasn’t had anyone to go with, doesn’t want to hike alone after a black bear was spotted there last month. He tells her he hikes that trail every Saturday at 8 a.m., has for 10 years, knows the area like the back of his hand. She pulls out her phone, hands it to him to put his number in, her thumb brushing his when he passes it back. He tells her he’ll bring extra water and bear spray, she says she’ll bring the chocolate chip cookies she bakes every Friday, the ones with extra flaky sea salt on top.
He says goodbye 10 minutes later, walks to his beat up 2017 F-150 in the parking lot, pulls his phone out when he gets in the driver’s seat. There’s a text from her already, a photo of the overlook he’d mentioned, captioned “Don’t be late, I hide the good cookies from people who show up after 8:15.” He turns the key in the ignition, the radio kicks on to the John Mellencamp song he used to blast on line repair jobs back in the 90s, he turns the volume up, grins, and pulls out of the gravel parking lot.
