Ronan O’Malley, 53, has made a fine art of avoiding small town community events for 12 years straight. The vintage snowmobile restorer lives 10 miles outside Traverse City, works 12 hour days in his cinder block shop, and only leaves the property to drop off finished builds or pick up parts. His only regular company is his hound dog, Mutt, and the occasional collector who flies in from Chicago to gawk at his 1971 Ski-Doo Everest. The only reason he’s standing at the annual township chili cook-off right now is his 19-year-old niece, who’d begged him for three weeks straight to enter his famous venison chili, threatening to hide all his socket sets if he bailed.
He’s leaning against the leg of a splintered pine picnic table, picking at a bowl of overcooked mac and cheese, when he hears that laugh. Low, throaty, a little rough around the edges, the same one he’d caught himself replaying in his head for weeks after he’d crashed a snowmobile with her on the back in 2001. He looks up, and Lila Marlow is standing two feet away, holding a dented tin of apple pie, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, flannel shirt unbuttoned over a thin gray thermal, forearms dusted with a light coat of flour. She’s his ex-wife’s first cousin. The woman he’d spent 20 years forcing himself not to look at, out of some misplaced loyalty to a marriage that had been dead long before the divorce papers were signed.
She steps back to avoid a kid darting past with a melting cherry popsicle, and her elbow slams into his forearm. The pie tin tilts, and a flaky crumb of crust falls onto the front of his oil-stained Carhartt. “Shit, sorry,” she says, grinning like she’s not sorry at all. She reaches out to brush the crumb off, and her fingers graze his chest for half a second, warm even through the thick canvas. He freezes. He’d forgotten how calloused her hands are, from years of kneading dough at the bakery she runs downtown. “Ronan O’Malley. I thought you’d barricaded yourself in that shop forever.”
He snorts, shoving his free hand in the pocket of his work jeans. “Almost. My niece blackmailed me.” They drift away from the crowd, over to the back of his beat-up 2008 Ford F150, parked at the edge of the park. The sun is dipping low over Grand Traverse Bay, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and pale pink, and the cold October air is making Lila’s cheeks flush bright pink. She leans against the truck bed next to him, her shoulder brushing his every time she shifts her weight, and he can smell vanilla and cinnamon on her hair, mixing with the sharp, sweet smell of fallen apple blossoms from the orchard down the road.
She teases him about the 2001 snowmobile crash, when he’d taken her out on the trails after Christmas, hit a patch of black ice, and sent them both tumbling into a 3 foot snowbank. They’d laid there for 10 minutes laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, snow down the back of their coats, and he’d had to drive her back to his house to get her warm, his ex out of town visiting her sister. He’d made her hot cocoa with extra peppermint, and she’d sat on his couch wrapped in his old college hoodie, and he’d had to leave the room to calm down because he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. He’d felt like a piece of garbage for weeks after that, convinced he was a terrible husband, even though his ex had been sleeping with her coworker for six months by then.
The guilt twists in his chest now, sharp and familiar. He should leave. This is a bad idea. Everyone in town knows Lila is his ex’s cousin, they’ll talk, he’ll have to deal with 12 different people asking him what the hell he’s doing by the end of the week. He’s spent so long avoiding drama, keeping his head down, not making waves. But then Lila turns to face him, and she’s looking up at him through her lashes, and she says, “I had the biggest crush on you back then, you know? Thought you were the nicest guy I’d ever met. Knew you were miserable with her, too. Never said anything. Didn’t want to be the homewrecker everyone already thought I was.”
She reaches up, brushes a dry maple leaf out of his hair, and her palm rests on his cheek for a long second, warm against the cold wind. The guilt melts, slow, replaced by something softer, warmer, something he hasn’t felt in so long he can barely name it. “I thought about you too,” he says, quiet enough only she can hear. “More times than I can count. Felt like a creep for it.” She laughs, low, and her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth, light as a feather. “You’re not a creep. You were just a guy stuck in a marriage that was never going to work. You don’t have to punish yourself for that anymore.”
He stares at her for a minute, the last of the sun hitting her hair, turning the ends gold, and he realizes she’s right. He’s spent 12 years punishing himself for a mistake he didn’t even make, cutting himself off from everyone, just to avoid the faint possibility of gossip. It’s stupid. It’s a waste. He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop. He has a 1972 Ski-Doo TNT he just finished restoring last week, he can make her that peppermint hot cocoa she liked, his hound dog is asleep on the couch in the back and he’s terrible at biting guests. She grins, and nods, and tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow as they walk around to the passenger side of the truck.
He opens the door for her, and she slides in, kicking her boots against the floor mat to shake the leaves off. He gets in the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the old radio crackles to life, playing a Johnny Cash song he hasn’t heard since he was a kid. She hums along, and rests her hand on the center console, two inches away from his, palm up. He reaches over, laces his fingers through hers, and she squeezes back, her calloused hand fitting perfectly in his. He pulls out of the parking lot, turning down the dirt road that leads to his shop, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel like he’s running from anything.
