Rafe Mendoza, 53, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a cinder block shop on three weedy acres outside Knoxville, Tennessee. He’s a lifelong people-pleaser who lies about weekend work orders to skip extended family barbecues, hasn’t dated since his divorce 8 years prior, and still tucks his shirt in when he runs errands even if he’s been sanding fiberglass all morning. He’d driven to the Blount County Fair that Thursday only to drop off the 1962 Scotty camper he’d restored and donated for the local 4-H raffle, planned to be back home in time to feed his two coonhounds before sunset, but the 92-degree heat stuck to his skin like glue, so he veered toward the peach pie stand tucked between the pig barn and the rodeo arena to grab a cold drink.
The woman behind the counter wiped a streak of flour off her left cheek with the back of her wrist, and Rafe froze halfway to the order window. It was Clara Bennett, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the last person he’d expected to see anywhere within a hundred miles of him. He’d only spoken to her a handful of times during his marriage, mostly at holiday dinners where she’d slip him an extra beer when his ex wasn’t looking, and he’d spent years deliberately avoiding anyone connected to that side of his old life, convinced they all blamed him for the split. She squinted for half a second, then broke into a grin so wide the corners of her eyes crinkled, and held up a frosty bottle of sweet tea before he even opened his mouth to order.
Their fingers brushed when she passed the bottle over the splintered wood counter, and Rafe’s palm tingled for a full 10 seconds after he pulled his hand away. The tea was so cold it made the bones in his knuckles ache, and the air around the stand smelled like baked crust, ripe peach, and the faint, fried tang of funnel cakes drifting from the food court 50 feet away. She leaned against the counter, her rolled-up flannel sleeve slipping down to show a tiny peach tattoo on her forearm, and told him she’d moved back to the area last year, bought 12 acres of peach orchard outside Maryville after her own divorce was finalized. He found himself leaning in too, close enough to catch the scent of coconut sunscreen on her hair, when a group of 4-H kids ran past yelling, jostling his shoulder.
He spent the next two hours leaning against that counter, swapping stories. She teased him about the time he’d tried to fix his ex’s lawnmower and broke the carburetor, leaving the yard uncut for three weeks. He teased her back about the time she’d gotten so drunk at his wedding reception she’d fallen into the groom’s parents’ koi pond, emerging with a goldfish stuck in the hem of her bridesmaid dress. A part of him screamed the whole time that this was a terrible idea, that tangled up with anyone related to his ex was a mistake waiting to happen, that he should grab his tea and drive home and forget he ever saw her. But a louder part of him couldn’t stop looking at the strands of silver in her sun-streaked brown hair, at the way she laughed so hard she snort-laughed when he told her about the time a customer tried to pay him for a camper restoration with a herd of goats.
The sun dipped low over the fairgrounds, the neon ride lights flickered on, and the last of the 4-H kids working the stand packed up their backpacks and left an hour later. Rafe offered to help her load the leftover pie tins and coolers into her beat-up silver pickup, and when they both reached for the same half-empty tin of peach filling at the same time, his hand covered hers. Neither of them pulled away. She held his gaze for three long beats, longer than was polite, longer than was appropriate for two people who were technically still family by old marriage ties, and said she’d been asking around about him for months, hadn’t wanted to overstep by reaching out first. He admitted he’d spent 8 years avoiding every person who’d ever met his ex, convinced they all thought he was the bad guy, and she shook her head, brushing a stray piece of grass off his work shirt sleeve, and said everyone had known his ex had been cheating on him for two years before he found out.
He finished loading the last cooler into the bed of her truck, and she leaned against the driver’s side door, twisting her keychain around her finger, and asked if he wanted to follow her back to her orchard. She had a half gallon of homemade peach ice cream in her deep freeze, she said, better than anything they sold at the fair. Rafe didn’t even hesitate, didn’t make an excuse about needing to get home to feed the dogs—he’d already texted his next-door neighbor to check on them 20 minutes earlier, when she’d been busy counting the day’s cash in the register. He nodded, and she smiled, climbing into her truck and rolling down the window to wave as she pulled out of the fair parking lot. Rafe got into his own F150, turned the key in the ignition, and followed her taillights down the dark two-lane highway, the cool night air whipping through the open window and carrying the faint, sweet scent of wild clover off the adjacent fields.
