Marlon Rourke, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, had only showed up to the Westside neighborhood block party because his next door neighbor banged on his garage door at 3 PM begging for his famous smoked jalapeno poppers, claiming the entire event would flop without them. He’d planned to drop the foil tray off, grab a free beer, and bolt back to his workbench where he was halfway through carving a cedar birdhouse for the local elementary school’s fundraiser, no small talk required. He leaned against the dented passenger side of his 2008 F150, foam clinging to the rim of his plastic lager cup, the acrid tang of charcoal and grilled bratwurst curling through the thick July air, and scanned the crowd for an exit route before anyone could corner him to ask about his “dating life” again.
That’s when he spotted her, leaning against the picnic table by the cornhole boards, laughing so hard she snort-laughed at a dumb joke the 19-year old kid mowing the park strip had just told. Lila Marlow, his late wife Ellie’s younger cousin, the one he hadn’t seen since Ellie’s funeral four years prior, the one who’d moved to Chicago for a library science degree back in 2003 and never came back. He froze mid-sip, beer sloshing over the edge of the cup onto his worn work boot. He’d heard through the family grapevine she’d moved back to town two months prior to run the small public library downtown, but he’d actively avoided any chance of running into her, because he still remembered the unspoken, electric crackle between them back when he and Ellie were newlyweds: the way she’d hold eye contact a beat too long across the Thanksgiving dinner table, the accidental brush of her warm, calloused hand against his when they passed the mashed potatoes, the way Ellie had teased him once that Lila had a “schoolgirl crush” on him that she thought was adorable.
She spotted him before he could duck behind the truck. Her smile softened, the loud laugh dying in her throat, and she pushed off the picnic table to walk over, her white linen dress swishing around her calves, silver hoops catching the gold of the sinking sunset. He felt a hot, conflicting twist in his chest: half guilt, sharp and heavy, for even noticing how the freckles across her nose had deepened in the sun, how the threads of silver in her dark brown hair glinted when she moved, half a stupid, giddy flutter he hadn’t felt since he was 17 and asking Ellie to prom. She stopped so close he could smell the coconut sunscreen she was wearing, mixed with the faint vanilla of her lip balm, and held out a hand. “Heard you were the popper guy everyone’s been raving about. Figured I owed you a thank you for the birdhouses you dropped off at the library last week. The kids have been fighting over who gets to hang theirs in the back garden.”
He blinked—he’d donated a dozen birdhouses to the library anonymously, left them by the front door before it opened so no one would bother him about it. “You recognized my work?” He said it before he could think, his voice rougher than he intended. She tapped the side of her own wrist, mirroring the small circular saw scar he’d gotten back in 2001. “You carve a tiny oak leaf on the side of every single one. Ellie used to show me every birdhouse you built for the back yard. I’d know that leaf anywhere.” She sat on the edge of his truck’s tailgate, patting the spot next to her, and he sat before he could talk himself out of it, their thighs pressing together through the thin fabric of his work pants and her dress, the heat of her skin seeping through even the layers.
She grabbed a popper off the tray he’d set on the tailgate, took a bite, and moaned softly, wiping a smudge of cream cheese off her chin with the back of her hand. “God, these are just as good as the ones you made at Ellie’s 40th birthday. I’ve been thinking about those for 12 years.” He reached out without thinking, brushing a crumb of fried panko off the corner of her mouth, his thumb brushing her lower lip for half a second, and he froze, waiting for her to pull away, waiting for the guilt to swallow him whole. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into the touch just barely, her dark eyes locking onto his, and she smiled, soft and slow. “I know what you’re thinking. That this is weird. That Ellie would be mad. But you know what she told me the last time I saw her, when she was in the hospital? She told me if I ever moved back to town, I had to kick your ass until you stopped locking yourself in that garage all day. She said you were too stubborn to ask for company, even when you were dying for it.”
The tight knot in his chest loosened, all the guilt and fear he’d carried for four years melting a little at the words, and he laughed, a real, loud laugh he hadn’t let out in months. The party was winding down around them, the last of the neighbors packing up coolers, fireflies blinking on in the long grass at the edge of the street, the faint sound of a 90s country song playing from someone’s portable speaker drifting through the air. She laced her fingers through his, her hand warm and calloused from turning library pages and planting tomato plants, and squeezed. “I have a bottle of that bourbon Ellie used to love hidden in my pantry, and a stack of old John Wayne DVDs you lent my family back in 1998 that I never returned. You wanna come over and help me finish them?”
He nodded, no hesitation, no overthinking, no stupid excuses about needing to get back to his birdhouse. He grabbed the last two poppers off the tray, stuffed them in a napkin, and hopped off the tailgate, still holding her hand. The warm amber glow of the streetlight gilded the edge of her silver hair as she leaned in to murmur that she’d saved the last cold sip of her lemonade for him to drink on the drive over.
