Rafe Escobar, 52, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a weathered red barn 20 minutes outside Boise, Idaho. He’s lived alone since his wife packed her bags and moved to Portland eight years prior, and he’s built a routine so rigid he eats the same turkey and Swiss sandwich for lunch every single day, no exceptions. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’s convinced any deviation from that routine will only bring more trouble than it’s worth. He only leaves the barn for supply runs, the occasional high school football game, and the annual Snake River Vintage Trailer Rally every June, where he sets up a booth to show off his latest builds and drum up new clients.
The temperature hit 93 by noon on the rally’s first Saturday, the air thick with the smell of pine, grilled bratwurst from the food truck near the entrance, and the faint, acrid tang of old camper exhaust. Rafe was wiping down the polished aluminum skin of a 1964 Airstream Sovereign he’d spent 10 months restoring for a client in Montana when he spotted her. Clara Bennett, 48, the widow of Jake, his old fishing buddy who’d commissioned a 1962 Airstream from him last year, only to die of a sudden heart attack three days before he was supposed to pick it up.
She stopped six inches from the edge of his booth, close enough he could pick up the coconut scent of her sunscreen and the sweet, syrupy smell of the iced peach tea in her plastic tumbler. She held his eye contact for three full seconds, longer than polite, before her gaze dropped to the calluses crisscrossing his forearms, then flicked back up to his face, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She was wearing a faded navy linen button down tied at the waist, frayed cutoff jeans, and scuffed white tennis shoes, silver hoop earrings catching the sun so they flashed every time she tilted her head.
Rafe froze. He’d avoided her calls for six months, too guilty to talk to her, convinced selling her the trailer Jake had been so excited for was some kind of betrayal. He’d almost donated the thing to a youth camping program before she’d sent him a check in the mail, no note, just the full amount Jake had agreed to pay.
She leaned in then, pointing at the custom walnut pull-out pantry he’d built into the Sovereign’s kitchen nook, her elbow brushing his bare forearm. Her skin was cool, even in the sweltering heat, and he felt a jolt shoot up his spine he hadn’t felt since before his wife left. She said she’d been trying to get ahold of him, wanted to add a fold-out bunk to the trailer she’d bought, was planning a road trip down Route 66 with her 16-year-old niece that fall. She was willing to pay double his usual rate, wait however long he needed. She slipped him a crumpled fast food napkin with her cell number scrawled in purple gel pen, her fingertips brushing his palm when she handed it over, before she turned and walked off to talk to a group of women by the food truck.
He stuffed the napkin in the pocket of his work jeans, avoided her for the rest of the afternoon, even ducked behind a row of old Scotty trailers when he saw her walking toward his booth an hour later. He kept replaying the sound of her laugh when he’d made a dumb joke about Airstream leaks being built-in humidifiers, the way a strand of her chestnut hair had fallen over her shoulder when she leaned in to look at the pantry. He felt sick, half of him screaming that he was disrespecting Jake, the other half screaming that he hadn’t felt this alive in close to a decade.
By 8 p.m. the sun had dipped below the trees, the air cooling off fast, and most of the rally attendees were gathered around a massive bonfire near the campground’s lake, drunk on cheap beer and yelling over each other about road trip horror stories. Rafe was perched on a folding chair on the edge of the crowd, sipping a lime seltzer, when she sat down next to him, so close their thighs pressed together through their jeans.
She said she knew he felt guilty, knew he’d been avoiding her. Jake had told her a hundred times during the build that Rafe was the most solid, honest guy he knew, that if anything ever happened to him, Rafe was the first person she should call if she needed help with anything. She wasn’t looking for a ring, or a big dramatic relationship, she said. She just wanted someone who knew the trailer, who got what it felt like to have the future you spent 20 years planning get ripped out from under you with no warning. She laid her hand on top of his, her thumb brushing the thin, silvery scar across his knuckle he’d gotten when he dropped a trailer frame last winter, and he didn’t pull away.
He told her he could fit her in first thing Monday morning, if she brought that iced peach tea she’d been drinking earlier. She laughed, leaning in so her breath brushed the shell of his ear, and said she’d bring a whole pitcher, plus the peach pie she’d baked the night before, if he promised not to charge her double. She squeezed his hand once, then stood up to walk back to her campsite, waving over her shoulder as she went.
He pulled the crumpled napkin out of his pocket, typed her number into his phone, and added a tiny peach emoji next to her name. Someone yelled his name from the bonfire, inviting him to join their cornhole tournament, but he stayed sitting for another minute, staring at his phone screen, the warmth from where her thigh had pressed against his still lingering on his skin. He hadn’t looked forward to a Monday in longer than he could remember.
