Elias Voss, 51, makes his living patching rust and reupholstering dinette cushions in vintage travel trailers, a career he stumbled into after his divorce pushed him from suburban Portland to a half-acre plot outside Newport, Oregon, eight years prior. His biggest flaw, as his sister likes to remind him every time she calls, is that he treats any casual social interaction like a leaky roof he can patch once and ignore forever. He only leaves his barn and his hound dog Mabel’s side on Friday nights for the waterfront food truck roundup, and only then because Mabel gets half a dozen leftover french fries from the taco truck owner who’s known her since she was a puppy.
The August air sticks to the back of his flannel shirt when he leans against the truck’s metal siding, waiting for his order of cod tacos with extra mango salsa, Mabel dozing at his boots. He doesn’t notice the woman approaching until Mabel’s tail thumps loud enough to rattle the empty soda cans at his feet, and the hound trots straight over to nudge her hand with her wet nose. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, his new next door neighbor, who moved into the blue cottage three months back, who he’s only waved at from across the property line, who he’s avoided talking to specifically because he doesn’t want to get roped into borrowing sugar or hearing about her plumbing problems for the next decade.
He sighs, hikes his tool belt higher on his hip, and walks over to corral Mabel. She’s already curled up at Clara’s feet, head resting on her white sneakers, and Clara laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the hum of the food truck generators and the distant crash of waves. “She’s the sweetest thing. I’ve seen her through the window when I’m watering my tomato plants, I’ve been dying to say hi.”
He mumbles an apology, reaches down to grab Mabel’s collar, and their fingers brush. Her skin is cool from holding a glass of lemonade, the tips of her nails painted a soft coral, and he yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot soldering iron, cheeks heating. He hasn’t felt that jolt in close to a decade, hasn’t even wanted to. He tells himself it’s just the heat, just the fact he hasn’t had a real conversation with anyone who isn’t his sister or the taco truck guy in three weeks.
His order gets called, and he moves to grab it, but Clara stops him, says she’s been staring at the half-restored 1972 Airstream parked by his barn every morning on her run, asks if he’s the one who works on them. When he nods, she leans in close, her shoulder brushing his bicep, because the taco truck’s generator rumbles extra loud when the owner fires up the grill for a batch of carne asada. She smells like coconut sunscreen and ripe peaches, and he has to fight the urge to lean in closer, to memorize the smell. She says she bought the exact same model Airstream last month, has no clue how to fix the rust along the bottom edge or rewire the overhead lights, has been scrolling Youtube tutorials for hours every night and getting nowhere.
He should say no. He tells himself he should say no, that he’s booked solid for the next three months, that he doesn’t do side jobs for people who live less than a hundred yards from his house, that mixing work and neighbors is a disaster waiting to happen. But then she sits down at a splintered pine picnic table, pats the spot next to her, and Mabel jumps up to lay her head in Clara’s lap, and he finds himself sitting before he can think better of it.
They talk for an hour, the tacos going cold on the paper plate between them, as she tells him about moving to the coast from Chicago after she quit her job as a high school librarian, about how she wants to drive the Airstream down to Baja next spring, about how she’s never been any good at fixing things but she’s stubborn enough to try. Every so often she leans in when a group of kids yelling as they run past makes it hard to hear, her knee brushing his under the table, and he doesn’t pull away. He finds himself telling her about the divorce, about how he moved to the coast to get away from everything that reminded him of his old life, about how he’d planned to live alone forever until he realized he was just bored, just scared.
When she reaches across the table to brush a fleck of cilantro off the sleeve of his flannel, her fingers linger on his forearm for half a second too long, her thumb brushing the scar he got when he dropped a sheet of aluminum on himself last winter, and the conflict he’s been feeling all night snaps. The disgust he’s always felt at the idea of letting someone get close, of risking getting his heart broken again, fades fast, replaced by a warmth he hasn’t felt in years, a quiet excitement he didn’t think he was capable of anymore.
She asks if he can come by her place the next afternoon to look at the Airstream, says she’s got a batch of peach iced tea chilling in the fridge that she made from the peaches she picked at a farm up the coast that morning. He doesn’t even hesitate before he says yes.
He walks her to her car when the sun dips below the ocean, Mabel trotting between them, and when she opens her driver’s side door, she turns to him, grinning, and says she’ll leave the porch light on for him. He nods, stands there until her car pulls out of the parking lot, Mabel nudging his hand with her nose.
The next afternoon, he slings his tool bag over his shoulder, grabs the extra can of rust seal he had sitting in his barn, and walks across the property line to her house. She’s waiting on the porch, barefoot, wearing a faded gray flannel almost the exact same shade as his, holding two cold glasses of iced tea, condensation dripping down the sides. Mabel trots past him straight up the porch steps, curls up on the woven rug by the door like she’s lived there her whole life. He steps up onto the porch, takes the glass she holds out to him, and their fingers brush again, this time he doesn’t pull away.
