Elias Voss, 62, retired rural electric co-op lineman, leaned against the dented chrome bumper of his fully restored 1972 Ford F-100 and swirled warm beer in his can. He’d only shown up to the town block party to shut up his neighbor, who’d banged on his door at 2 p.m. begging him to bring the truck so local kids could climb in the bed. He’d planned to stay 20 minutes max, avoid small talk, go home to his frozen lasagna and the western marathon on MeTV. Eight years after his wife Linda passed, he still treated any social event longer than a quick trip to the hardware store like a chore he could skip if he moved fast enough. His biggest flaw, his son had told him on his last visit home, was that he’d built a wall so high around himself he couldn’t even see the people trying to climb over it. Elias had told him to mind his own business, but the line had stuck in his throat for weeks.
The air smelled like charred bratwurst, cut Kentucky bluegrass, and faint chlorine from the fire department’s temporary sprinkler the kids were screaming through. A portable speaker half a block over hummed old Conway Twitty, loud enough that the bass thrummed in the bones of his ankles. He was just about to toss his empty beer can in the trash and make a run for it when a woman he recognized stepped around the side of the truck, squinting at the custom pinstriping he’d spent three weekends painting by hand. She was Mara Carter, 58, the new librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, and the entire west side of the county had been yelling about her ever since the library board voted to add a section of adult romance novels with explicit content to the shelves. Half the town was boycotting the library, calling her a smut peddler at city council meetings, taping flyers to the grocery store bulletin board demanding she be fired. Elias had stayed out of the drama, but he’d heard enough gossip to feel a stupid jolt of curiosity when she stopped a foot away from him, her sneakers scuffing the asphalt.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, tilting her chin up to meet his eye. Her hair was streaked with silver, pulled back in a loose braid, and she was wearing faded overalls and a band tee for a 90s folk band he’d seen live in Columbus back in 1994. “My dad had the exact same truck. I haven’t seen one in this good of shape in 20 years.”
Elias nodded, suddenly self-conscious of the grease stain on the knee of his work jeans, the calluses on his hands from splitting firewood the week before. He’d not spoken to a woman he found this immediately attractive since Linda died, and a stupid, old-fashioned part of him screamed that wanting to talk to her was a betrayal, that he should make an excuse and leave. He ignored it, jerking his thumb at the hood. “Redid the entire engine last winter. Spent more on parts than I paid for the truck back in ‘09.”
She laughed, a warm, throaty sound that cut through the noise of the kids yelling. She leaned in to run a single finger along the polished edge of the hood ornament, her shoulder brushing his bicep for half a second. He caught a whiff of her perfume: jasmine, mixed with the dry, sweet smell of old paper, exactly the way the tiny library back in his hometown had smelled when he was a kid. “Mind if I look under the hood?” she asked.
He popped the latch, stepped back to let her lean over the engine bay. When he leaned in next to her to point out the custom carburetor he’d machined himself, their elbows knocked together. She didn’t move away. He could feel the heat of her arm through the thin cotton of her flannel shirt, see the faint smudge of ink on her wrist from stamping library books, the tiny gold hoop in her left ear. He found himself rambling, telling her stupid work stories: the time he’d climbed a pole in a blizzard only to find a raccoon nesting in the transformer, the time his crew had pranked him by gluing his hard hat to the roof of the work truck. She laughed so hard at the raccoon story she snort-laughed, and he felt a tightness in his chest he hadn’t felt in years, not the sharp, sad tightness of grief, but something light, something giddy.
They moved to sit on the tailgate a few minutes later, watching a group of kids chase each other through the sprinkler, their clothes soaked through. Her knee brushed his when she shifted to get more comfortable, and he didn’t move his leg away. She mentioned the library drama first, rolling her eyes, picking at a loose thread on her overalls. “I got yelled at by a woman in the produce section yesterday because her 17-year-old checked out a romance novel,” she said, shaking her head. “Like I’m supposed to police what grown teenagers read.”
Elias surprised himself by snorting. “Half the people complaining about those books have a stack of the same exact ones hidden under their bed, I bet. They just don’t want anyone to know they’re having fun.” He’d never said that out loud to anyone, had kept his opinion to himself to avoid arguments, but it felt easy to say it to her.
She turned to look at him, her eyes bright, and reached out to touch his wrist, her fingers warm against the sun-warmed skin. The contact sent a jolt up his arm, and he didn’t pull away. “You’re the first person in this town who’s said that to me without me having to drag it out of them,” she said. “If you ever stop by the library, I’ve got a whole stack of old Louis L’Amour westerns no one’s checked out in years. I can set them aside for you.” She paused, her thumb brushing the edge of the old lineman’s scar on his wrist, the one he’d gotten when a live wire sparked on him back in 2006. “We could get pie at the diner after, if you want. They’ve got peach pie that’s so sweet it’ll make your teeth hurt.”
Elias nodded, his throat too tight to speak for a second. He’d spent so long telling himself he didn’t need anyone, that being alone was easier, that letting someone in would only lead to more pain, but all of that felt stupid now, sitting on the tailgate of his truck next to this woman who laughed at his dumb jokes and liked old trucks and didn’t care what the town gossips thought about her.
The party started winding down as the sun dipped below the oak trees at the end of the street, the sky turning pink and orange at the edges. Mara said she had to go feed her tabby cat, who hated being left alone for too long, and scribbled her cell number on a scrap of receipt from the bookstore in the next town, tucking it into the pocket of his flannel shirt. She waved over her shoulder as she walked down the street, the end of her braid bouncing against her back.
Elias pulled the scrap of paper out of his pocket, ran a calloused finger over the smudged blue ink, and smiled to himself, already planning what he’d wear to the library the next morning.
