Javi Mendez, 59, has built a small, steady business restoring vintage campers out of a converted barn 20 minutes outside Asheville, North Carolina. His only rule for the last eight years, ever since his wife packed her bags and left for a Cary real estate agent with a waterfront house, is no mess, no complications, no unnecessary small talk. He’s spent years ribbing his best friend Ron for chasing casual hookups at every quarterly camper rally they attend, calling the whole thing cheap, low-rent campground drama. He’s got two hound dogs, a stack of 1970s country records, and a workshop full of reclaimed barn wood, and for a long time he’s sworn that’s more than enough.
The October rally outside Waynesville is crisp, the air sharp with pine and wood smoke and the sweet, burnt sugar smell of the s’mores pop-up set up 20 feet from the spot where he’s parked the fully restored 1972 Airstream Sovereign he just finished for a client out of Miami. He grabs a beer from the cooler by his fire pit around 6 p.m., his boots crunching over fallen red oak leaves, and moseys over to the pop-up to grab a snack. The woman running it, Clara, has smudges of dark chocolate on her knuckles and a tiny silver constellation tattoo peeking out from the collar of her faded flannel shirt, and when she laughs at his dumb joke about over-toasting marshmallows until they’re charred black all the way through, she snorts a little, quiet, like she’s embarrassed by it.
When she hands him the s’more, their fingers brush. He feels the callus on her index finger, worn hard from holding marshmallow roasters for 12 hour shifts at festivals, and the contact zips up his arm fast enough that he almost drops the graham cracker. He pays, mumbles a thanks, and hurries back to his spot, annoyed at himself for the jolt. He’s spent almost a decade deliberately avoiding anything that even hints at romance, has turned down three separate women who’ve asked him out at rallies over the years, and he’s not about to break his streak for a stranger who sells s’mores for a living.
They keep crossing paths all night. He’s adjusting the awning on the Airstream when she walks by hauling a case of graham crackers, and she stops to ask him about the custom walnut countertop he installed inside, leaning in so close her shoulder presses against his bicep for three full seconds, her cedar and vanilla perfume mixing with the smoke curling off his campfire. He catches her staring at him from behind the pop-up counter twice when he’s chatting with a group of fellow restorers, and each time she doesn’t look away, just smiles slow, like she knows exactly what she’s doing. He feels off-kilter, equal parts irritated that she’s throwing off his routine and giddy, like a teenager sneaking out past curfew.
By 11 p.m., the bluegrass band has packed up, most of the crowd has retreated to their campers, and only a handful of stragglers are left milling around the food truck row. He’s sitting on a fallen log by his fire, sipping a second beer, when she walks over holding two mugs of spiced apple cider, steam curling off the top. She sits down next to him so close their knees touch through their jeans, and she hands him one of the mugs, her knuckles brushing his again, deliberate this time.
She says she’s been watching him all day, noticed he doesn’t wear a ring, asks him why he kept dodging her smile every time they locked eyes. He tells her about his rule, about the eight years alone, about how he’s always thought rally hookups are cheap, and she laughs, leaning in so he can smell the cinnamon on her breath. She says rules are made to be broken, especially the ones you make out of grief, and she reaches up to brush a fleck of ash off his cheek, her thumb lingering on the stubble along his jawline for a beat too long.
He doesn’t overthink it. He asks her if she wants to see the inside of the Airstream, tells her he installed heated tile floors and a vintage record player with a full stack of Johnny Cash albums he picked up at a yard sale last month. She nods, stands up, and holds out her hand, her palm warm and sticky from a stray bit of marshmallow she missed wiping off. He takes it, his calloused work hand fitting around hers like it was made to, and they walk up the Airstream’s metal steps together. He pulls the door closed behind them, the soft glow of the string lights he strung inside spilling out through the frosted glass window above the door, mixing with the orange flicker of the dying campfire.
