Ron Voss is 58, retired lineworker, three years widowed, carries a scar up his left forearm from a 2001 pole fall he still lies about to anyone who asks. His biggest, dumbest flaw is holding grudges so long he forgets how they started—case in point, the 22-year cold war he’s waged with Clara Bennett, his ex-wife’s second cousin, over a bet he swears he was cheated out of. He’d avoided every family gathering, every town event she was likely to attend for two decades, until his buddy Pete practically dragged him to the annual Main Street street fair, saying if he spent one more night rotting on his couch watching old Westerns he was gonna call a senior center and sign him up for square dancing lessons.
The air smells like fried Oreos, cut clover, and diesel from the food truck generators. Ron’s holding a lukewarm draft in a plastic cup, steel-toe boots scuffing the asphalt, when someone slams into his chest hard enough to slosh beer down the front of his faded work flannel. He huffs, ready to snap, and looks down to find Clara Bennett staring back up at him, silver-streaked bob stuck to her sun-sweaty forehead, a lemon shake-up in one hand, the other pressed to his sternum to steady herself. She’s 49, he remembers, divorced last year, moved back to town six months prior to care for her mom with MS. He’d heard the gossip through the VFW grapevine, had pretended not to care.
She smirks, the same sharp, lopsided smirk that drove him crazy back when they were both half their current age, and doesn’t step back. Her arm is still pressed to his, the fabric of her faded Neil Young tee thin enough that he can feel the heat of her skin through his flannel. “Still wearing those steel toes to every public event, Voss?” she says, nodding at his boots, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rough around the edges from years of smoking menthols and singing too loud at bar karaoke. He can smell coconut sunscreen and cherry pipe tobacco on her, the exact same kind he quit dipping after his first heart scare five years back, and his mouth goes dry for a second.
He wants to snap back, make a snide comment about her still being a walking disaster who can’t walk 10 feet without running into someone, but the words stick in his throat. He notices the faint crow’s feet at the corners of her hazel eyes, the chipped navy blue polish on her fingernails, the tiny silver hoop through her left nostril he’d never noticed before. The old anger fizzes out before it can catch, replaced by a weird, tight flutter in his chest he hasn’t felt since his first date with his late wife, Linda.
He’s disgusted with himself at first. She’s family adjacent, for Christ’s sake, everyone in town thinks they hate each other, he’s spent 22 years acting like she’s the devil incarnate over a stupid $500 bet he definitely lost fair and square. He’d claimed she distracted him by yelling up at him when he was climbing the old water tower to prove he could do it in under two minutes, but he’d just slipped on a patch of moss, plain and simple. He’d refused to pay her, stormed off, and avoided her ever since.
She gestures to an empty picnic table tucked behind the corn dog stand, out of the way of the crowd, and he follows before he can talk himself out of it. Their knees brush under the splintered wooden table when they sit down, and neither of them moves away. She tells him about her mom’s physical therapy, about the stray cat she’s been feeding that keeps leaving dead mice on her porch, about how she’d seen him fixing Mrs. Henderson’s gutter for free last week, said she always knew he was a big softie under all the gruff lineworker bluster. He tells her about Linda’s last six months, about how he sleeps on the couch because their king size bed feels too big and too empty, about the 1972 Ford F-150 he’s been restoring in his garage for the past two years that still won’t turn over.
The sun dips below the roofline of the hardware store up the street, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the fair’s string lights flicker on, casting warm gold across her face. She leans forward, elbows on the table, and her hand brushes his where it’s resting next to his beer cup. “You still owe me that $500, by the way,” she says, and there’s no bite in it, just that same teasing smirk, and her knee is pressed solidly to his now, not a casual brush, intentional.
He laughs, pulls his worn leather wallet out of his back pocket, counts out five crisp hundred dollar bills he’d withdrawn earlier to pay for the new carburetor for his truck, and slides them across the table to her. She picks them up, tucks them into the back pocket of her cutoff jeans, and leans in even closer, so close he can feel her breath warm against his ear, the faint scent of spearmint gum on her breath mixing with the cherry tobacco and coconut. “You can make it up to me by making me that famous meatloaf you used to bring to family cookouts,” she says. “7 o’clock tomorrow night. No more stupid grudges, okay? I’m tired of pretending I don’t like bugging you.”
He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t worry about what the town gossips will say when they see her truck parked in his driveway. “7 o’clock,” he says. “I’ll even make the garlic mashed potatoes you used to sneak off my plate back in the day.”
She stands up, slings her canvas tote bag over her shoulder, and squeezes his wrist for three slow seconds before she turns to walk away. “Wear the steel toes,” she calls over her shoulder, already weaving through the crowd of kids chasing each other with glow sticks. “I think they’re hot.”
He sits there for another ten minutes, sipping his now warm beer, watching the Ferris wheel spin slow against the darkening sky. A kid runs past, holding a cotton candy cone bigger than his head, and bumps his shoulder, but Ron doesn’t even mind. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, texts Pete to tell him he doesn’t need a ride home, he’s gonna walk, and shoves the phone back in his pocket before Pete can send back a dozen dumb jokes about him finally getting laid. He stands up, brushes crumbs off his jeans, and starts walking toward home, already mentally running through the list of ingredients he needs to pick up for the meatloaf on the way.
