Rafe Figueroa, 52, makes his living sanding water damage out of 1970s camper walls and rewiring rusted camp stove outlets, and he’d rather spend 12 hours prying a rotted floor panel out of a Scotty Sportsman than be anywhere near the Traverse City annual cherry festival beer tent. His buddy Javi, who runs the local NAPA, dragged him here an hour prior, saying he’d spent too many Saturday nights alone in his barn listening to old Merle Haggard records, and Rafe hadn’t had the energy to argue. He leans against a splintered wooden support pole, work boots still crusted with pine sawdust from that morning’s job, nursing a cherry amber ale that tastes better than he expected, and scans the crowd for an exit route.
He spots her before she spots him. Elara Moore, 48, who runs the pie stand at the downtown farmers market, the one he buys a peach pie from every other Saturday, the one he only ever exchanges three words with “how much?” “thanks” — because he’s spent the last 12 months talking himself out of even saying anything else. Her husband was a local firefighter who died on a call three years prior, the whole town still wears wristbands with his name on them, and Rafe has told himself a hundred times that even looking at her for longer than two seconds makes him a bottom-feeding creep, that any interest he has is predatory, that the whole town would run him out of the county if he so much as asked her how her day was.
She’s wearing a red gingham sundress, the cuff of the left sleeve dotted with a bright cherry juice stain, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid dotted with a few stray cherry blossoms someone handed her earlier. She laughs at something her friend says, head thrown back, and Rafe’s chest tightens so much he nearly drops his beer. She catches his stare, blinks, then grins and waves. He freezes for half a second, then lifts his own hand awkwardly, his palm slick with sweat.
She walks over before he can pretend he got a text and bolt. She stands close enough that he can smell the lavender soap she uses, mixed with the sweet, sticky scent of cherry pie filling clinging to her hands, the bluegrass band’s fiddle so loud she has to lean in to talk, her elbow brushing his bicep when she does. “Thought that was you,” she yells over the music, her breath warm against his ear. “I’ve been meaning to track you down. I picked up a beat-up 1972 Scotty last week off Facebook Marketplace, needs the whole works — new floor, rewired lights, the whole nine yards. Everyone says you’re the only guy within 50 miles who doesn’t botch vintage camper jobs.”
A drunk guy in a cherry-themed bucket hat stumbles past, slamming his shoulder into Elara’s back, and she grabs Rafe’s forearm to steady herself. Her hand is warm, calloused from years of rolling pie dough, and he can feel the faint indent of her old wedding band still pressed into the skin of her ring finger, even though she doesn’t wear the ring anymore. He flinches like he’s been burned, half from the spark of the touch, half from the guilt roaring up in his throat. He wants to say yes, wants to spend every day for the next month working on that camper with her, wants to ask her if she wants to get a cheese curd platter with him right now, but all he can mumble is, “I don’t take jobs from people I know. Mixes business and… stuff.”
She leans back, raises an eyebrow, and laughs, loud and bright enough that a few people nearby glance over. “Who said anything about a job?” she says, still smiling, reaching into her purse to pull out a crumpled napkin and a ballpoint pen. “I already got a quote from that kid over in Kalkaska who does camper work. I was asking if you wanted to help me test out the camp stove I bought for it this weekend. I’m heading up to the dunes, got a spot right on Lake Michigan. I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out for 18 months, for the record. Thought you hated me, you never said more than two words to me at the market.”
Rafe blinks. All the guilt he’s been carrying for a year, all the times he called himself a creep for staring at her across the farmers market, all the excuses he made for avoiding any event she might be at, fizzles out so fast he feels lightheaded. “You didn’t think it was too soon?” he says, quiet enough only she can hear it, nodding at the faint indent on her ring finger.
She shrugs, finishing writing her address and phone number on the napkin, the corner dotted with a smudge of blueberry filling. “Grief doesn’t have an expiration date. I stopped waiting for permission to be happy a year ago. You gonna say yes, or are you gonna go back to hiding in your barn listening to Merle Haggard? Javi told me that’s all you do lately.”
He snorts, shaking his head. “Javi needs to mind his own business.” He takes the napkin when she holds it out, his fingers brushing hers, and tucks it into the pocket of his faded flannel shirt. “Yeah. I’ll go. What time?”
“Seven AM Saturday,” she says, grinning, patting his chest lightly when she tucks the napkin all the way into his pocket so it doesn’t fall out. “Don’t wear those work boots. The sand up there is soft, you’ll get sawdust all over my blanket. And bring that peach jam you sell on the side, the one with the bourbon in it. I’ve been wanting to try it.”
She waves, turning to walk back to her friends, her sundress swishing around her calves as she goes. Rafe takes a sip of his beer, watching her laugh as she sits back down next to her group, and for the first time in six years, he doesn’t feel the urge to leave a party early.
