Rafe Mendez, 53, vintage arcade restorer, had spent the first three hours of the Marshall Summer Street Fair swatting wasps away from his booth’s cooler of sweet tea and pretending he didn’t see the local moms side-eyeing the grease crusted under his fingernails. He’d only agreed to set up the fully restored 1982 Pac-Man cabinet as a favor to the fair organizer, who’d paid him in a case of local IPA and a promise to talk the county zoning board into dropping the $150 fine the new sheriff had slapped him with two weeks prior for leaving a half-restored Centipede cabinet on his front porch. The sheriff ran on a “clean up our small town” platform, all pressed khakis and empty promises, and Rafe had written the guy off as another power-hungry blowhard before he’d even finished his inauguration speech.
The fair noise was relentless: country music blaring from the bandstand, kids screaming on the tilt-a-whirl, the sharp crack of corn dogs being dropped in fryers. He was leaning against the booth’s wooden frame, sipping sweet tea and watching a 10-year-old beat the Pac-Man high score, when she walked up. He recognized her immediately: Lena, the new town librarian, who’d dropped off a beat-to-hell Donkey Kong cabinet at his shop last month for the library’s teen game night. She’d stayed for 45 minutes that day, asking him about the wiring on the control panel, laughing when he told her he’d once gotten so mad at a malfunctioning Space Invaders machine he’d thrown a screwdriver through its screen. He’d thought about her every other day since, even though he’d told himself three years ago when he moved to town he wasn’t going to get tangled up with anyone local, not after the messy public divorce that had chased him out of Tampa.
She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Dolly Parton tee, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a smudge of blue cotton candy on her left cheek. She leaned in when she said hi, her shoulder brushing his bicep, because a group of teens on ATVs were roaring past the booth. He could smell coconut sunscreen and spearmint gum on her, and his throat went dry for half a second. She nodded at the Pac-Man cabinet, said she’d been hogging the Donkey Kong at the library every night after closing, and asked if she could take a turn. He stepped aside to let her play, his hand brushing the small of her back for half a beat when he moved a folding chair out of her way, and he swore he felt her shiver a little, even through the thin cotton of her shirt.
She was terrible at Pac-Man, kept running straight into the red ghost every time she got close to a power pellet, laughing so hard she snort-laughed when she lost her third life. Her elbow knocked his ribs every time she leaned forward to yank the joystick harder, and he found himself leaning in closer too, pointing at the screen when the blue ghost snuck up behind her, their faces inches apart for a split second. He could hear her breath catch when their eyes met, and she glanced over her shoulder quick, like she was checking if anyone was watching. He knew who her husband was, everyone did: the new sheriff, the guy who’d been all over the local paper last week talking about “protecting family values” and cracking down on “immoral behavior” in town. That’s where the sharp, hot thrill kicked in, the part of him that had been bored and numb for seven years perking up at the idea of doing something that would make that blowhard’s head explode.
She lost her final life, slamming the side of the cabinet playfully, and turned to him, her cheeks pink from the heat and the laughter. She nodded toward the edge of the fairgrounds, where the old apple orchard started, the trees heavy with unripe green fruit, no one wandering over there this early in the harvest season. “My husband’s giving a 45-minute speech at the bandstand right now,” she said, her voice low enough only he could hear it, her fingers brushing the back of his hand where it rested on the booth counter. “I don’t really feel like listening to him lie about how much he cares about this town. Wanna walk?”
He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the zoning fine, thinking about the gossip that would spread faster than a wildfire if anyone saw them, thinking about how he’d sworn off all of this mess a long time ago. Then he looked at her, at the blue cotton candy smudge on her cheek, the way she was biting her lower lip like she thought he might say no, and he nodded. He told the 10-year-old who’d been hanging around the booth he could have free run of Pac-Man while he was gone, and followed her past the funnel cake stand and the corn hole tournament, toward the orchard.
The noise of the fair faded the deeper they walked, the dry crinkle of dead grass under their work boots the only sound for a minute. She stopped under a gnarled old apple tree at the edge of the orchard, leaning back against the rough bark, and turned to him. She said she’d thought about him every day since she dropped off the Donkey Kong, that her husband spent every waking minute either campaigning or yelling at his deputies, that he hadn’t asked her how her day was in four months. She said she liked that Rafe didn’t care what anyone in town thought of him, that he wore his grease stains like a badge of honor, that he didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t.
He stepped closer to her, the toe of his boot brushing hers, and reached up to wipe the blue cotton candy smudge off her cheek with his thumb. His knuckle brushed her jaw when he did it, and she leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second. He could hear the distant whine of a sheriff’s department ATV coming down the dirt path that cut through the orchard, but neither of them jumped apart. She laced her fingers through his, squeezed once, tight, and nodded toward the tree line that led straight to the back entrance of his shop. “I’ll tell my friend I’m crashing at her place tonight,” she said, her voice soft, her eyes bright. “Meet me there in 20 minutes. Don’t be late.”
She let go of his hand first, pushing off the tree and walking back toward the fair, glancing over her shoulder once to wink at him before she disappeared into the crowd of people milling around the bandstand. He stood there for another minute, the faint coconut scent of her sunscreen still clinging to his thumb, and turned toward the tree line before the ATV rounded the bend.
