Arlo Mendez, 59, spends 40 hours a week prying rusted type baskets off vintage Royal and Smith Corona machines, grease permanently crusted under the edges of his fingernails, calluses thick enough that he can hold a soldering iron for 10 minutes straight without flinching. He’s avoided county fairs for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a timeshare salesman mid-pie-eating contest, but his 19-year-old niece begged him to set up a craft booth this August, promised he’d make enough cash to cover the new trolling motor he’s been eyeing for his Lake of the Ozarks fishing trip. The tent plastic sticks to his forearm where the humidity seeps through, fried dough and pig barn scent curling in from the midway, Johnny Cash playing tinny from the portable radio he propped on a stack of restored typewriters.
He’s wiping down a 1956 Quiet De Luxe when a shadow falls over the table. He looks up, and there’s Clara Hale, 52, the 4H food contest judge, gingham shirt rolled to her elbows, cowboy boots caked in mud from the horse show, a smudge of blueberry pie filling high on her left cheek. She’s his ex’s college roommate, he’s known her 22 years, and he’s spent most of that time actively avoiding one-on-one conversations with her, convinced small town unwritten rules forbid messing with your ex’s closest friend. She leans her hip against the edge of the booth, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and warm peach pie on her breath, and taps the edge of the Royal with a fingernail painted chipped cherry red. “Still selling dinosaurs no one under 70 knows how to use?” she teases, holding eye contact long enough that he feels the back of his neck heat up.
He snorts, holding up a loose typebar he’d pulled off a junked machine earlier that day. “Still giving first place to Mabel Henderson’s peach pie even when everyone knows she uses canned filling?” he shoots back. She laughs, loud and bright, and reaches for the typebar he’s holding, their fingers brushing for half a second. The jolt runs up his arm fast enough that he almost drops the metal piece, pulling his hand back like he’s been burned. She smirks, doesn’t comment, just tucks a strand of salt-and-pepper hair behind her ear, and says she’s got a 1962 Smith Corona her dad left her, the carriage stuck so bad she can’t even type a grocery list on it. She asks if he can take a look, says she’s done with judging at 7:30, can meet him at his workshop after. He agrees before he can talk himself out of it.
The next two hours drag. He sells two more typewriters, but he’s barely paying attention, his brain looping between how stupid it is to get involved with his ex’s best friend, how much he’d love to wipe that pie smudge off her cheek, how everyone in town will talk if they see her truck in his driveway. He packs up his booth 10 minutes early, drives back to the old barn he uses as a workshop, shoves a couple root beers in the mini fridge, turns the radio up a little louder, tells himself he can still text her and say he changed his mind. He doesn’t.
Her truck pulls up the gravel drive at 7:45, a paper plate wrapped in aluminum foil tucked under her arm. She holds it up when she walks in, says it’s the blueberry pie that should have won first place, snuck it out before Mabel could throw a fit about the results. They sit on the edge of his workbench, passing the plate back and forth, the crust buttery and sweet, the blueberries tart enough to make his eyes water. She reaches over to wipe a crumb off his lower lip, her thumb brushing his skin, and this time he doesn’t pull away. She leans in a little, says she’s been wanting to ask him out for three years, but thought he was still too hung up on his ex, too stubborn to notice anyone was paying attention.
He admits he’s been an idiot, spent 12 years hiding in his barn because he thought any kind of romance after 50 was just asking to get his heart broken, that he avoided her specifically because he was scared of what people would say. She laughs, and shifts closer, her knee pressing against his, the heat of her leg seeping through the denim of his jeans. “Let them talk,” she says, and he kisses her then, slow, tastes blueberry and coconut and root beer, the crickets chirping loud outside the barn walls, the radio playing a faded Patsy Cline track.
Later, they’re sitting on his front porch, root beer bottles sweating in their hands, fireflies blinking low over the pasture across the street. He’s already dragged her Smith Corona onto the workbench, plans to fix the carriage this weekend, carve a tiny little pie into the side of the space bar as a joke. She leans her head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arm around her, the tension he’s carried in his shoulders for 12 years melting away a little at a time. A firefly lands on the edge of her boot, and he reaches down to cup it in his palm, holding it up for her to see before he blows it back into the dark.
