Rafe only showed up to the fire department’s summer cookout because his most high-paying client, a retired surgeon who’d commissioned a full frame-off restoration of a 1958 Airstream Sovereign, begged him to, promising to throw an extra $500 on his invoice if he stayed for at least an hour. The lot behind the fire station was packed with folding chairs, a bouncy house screaming with overheated kids, and a line of people waiting for grilled brats that stretched past the beer cooler he’d planted himself next to the second he walked in. He had on a faded charcoal Carhartt shirt he’d worn to work that morning, work boots caked with dust from the shop, and half-moons of axle grease under his fingernails he’d scrubbed at for three minutes in the station bathroom without making a dent. Rafe Cervantes was 53, a vintage travel trailer restorer who’d moved to rural eastern Oregon from Phoenix six years prior, and he’d spent the eight years since his acrimonious divorce shutting down casual connections, convinced letting anyone get close just meant more paperwork and more disappointment when things inevitably fell apart. He avoided the town’s constant community events like they carried a contagious rash, only left his 3-acre plot for supply runs and mandatory client meetings, and told anyone who asked that he liked his quiet, uncomplicated life just fine.
A woman reached past him before he could register she was there, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep as she grabbed a glass bottle of root beer from the ice at the bottom of the cooler. She smelled like lavender hand cream and lemon Pledge, sharp and warm at the same time, and when she pulled back she held his eye contact for two full beats longer than the usual polite glance strangers give each other at these things. She was in a faded denim shirt and cutoff jeans, silver streaks threading through the auburn hair she’d pulled back in a loose braid, calluses on the tips of her fingers where she’d been running them along the bottle’s ridged label. “Rafe, right?” she said, grinning when he blinked at her like she’d grown a second head. “I’m Maren. The new county librarian. I recognize your name from the half-dozen vintage trailer repair manual hold slips you submit every month. You’ve got the whole 1970s Airstream plumbing section on permanent loan, basically.”
He grunted in response, already reaching for an excuse to walk away, but she leaned against the cooler next to him, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her sun-warmed arm, and started teasing him about the grease under his nails, saying she’d spent the last three months trying to fix a persistent water line leak in the 1972 Scotty she’d inherited from her dad, and she’d probably pay twice his hourly rate just to get someone who knew what they were doing to look at it. He hesitated. He’d turned down every casual side gig and every half-flirtatious invitation for coffee that had come his way since he moved to town, convinced he was better off alone, no arguments, no shared bills, no one asking him where he’d been until 10pm on a Saturday. But Maren was laughing at the face he made when a kid ran past him covered head to toe in ketchup, and she didn’t flinch when he accidentally brushed her hand when he reached for his beer, and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had talked to him like he was a person, not just a guy who fixed old trailers for rich people with too much disposable income.
The auction for the dented 1962 Airstream shell the fire department had pulled from an abandoned property outside of town started ten minutes later, and Rafe was bidding against a guy from Bend who wanted to turn it into a gourmet hot dog truck, the numbers climbing higher than he’d planned to spend. He was about to drop out when Maren leaned in, her mouth so close to his ear he could feel her warm breath fanning over the stubble on his neck, and whispered she’d split the bid with him if he let her turn half the interior into a pop-up library for the campgrounds scattered around the county. “You get your shell for parts or whatever project you’ve got bouncing around your head,” she said, her shoulder pressed firm against his, “I get to give kids who don’t have library cards access to comic books and fantasy novels. Win win.” Before he could overthink it, he raised his paddle, bid $1200, and the fire chief banged his gavel, grinning and calling Rafe’s name over the chatter of the crowd.
They stood off to the side after that, filling out the auction paperwork together, Maren scribbling her phone number on the back of a crumpled library hold slip and tucking it into the breast pocket of his Carhartt shirt, her fingers brushing the fabric of his shirt for half a second longer than necessary. The sun was dipping low over the pine-covered hills by the time she said she had to head home, her ancient tabby cat was waiting for her to feed him, and Rafe walked her to her beat up 2008 Subaru Outback, the gravel crunching soft under their work boots. She stopped at the driver’s side door, turned to him, and leaned in to kiss his cheek, her lips soft and warm against his sunburnt skin, and he felt his ears go bright red, something tight in his chest he’d forgotten existed loosening up for the first time in years.
He stood in the half-empty parking lot long after she’d driven away, the crumpled auction paperwork in one hand, the hold slip with her phone number digging into his palm through his shirt pocket. He pulled his beat up flip phone out of his jeans, typed her number into his contacts, and sent her a one-line text saying he’d leave the back gate to his shop unlocked Tuesday at 6, so she could bring her Scotty’s plumbing schematic and that bottle of root beer she liked.
