Roman Voss, 58, retired Cleveland Hopkins air traffic controller, leans against a splintered wooden post at the annual Madison Township volunteer fire department fish fry, twisting a crinkled plastic cup of Yuengling between calloused fingers. He’d only stopped by out of obligation, the same way he shows up to every local community event these days to avoid the neighbors whispering about how he’s turned into a hermit since his wife Elaine died three years prior. His flaw, the one his old coworker used to nag him about, is that he treats any deviation from his routine like a mid-air collision waiting to happen—no last minute plans, no small talk with strangers, no letting his gaze linger on any woman for longer than half a second, like that’s the only way to keep the promise he made to Elaine on her deathbed to do right by her memory.
The air smells like fried catfish, hushpuppies doused in honey butter, and the faint, sharp tang of citronella torches keeping the mosquitos away. The county cover band is grinding through a slow, twangy version of Patsy Cline’s *Crazy* from the temporary stage by the cornhole boards, and kids are screaming so loud on the bounce house he can barely hear the guy next to him ramble about his new riding lawn mower. He’s about to slip away, half his beer still full, when he spots her.
Marnie Cole, Elaine’s first cousin, 10 years younger than him, the kid who’d showed up to their 1995 wedding in a neon tie-dye tank top and flip flops, now standing by the dessert table brushing crumbs off the front of her denim jacket. He’d heard she moved back to town last month to take over her mom’s Main Street bakery, but he’d avoided running into her on purpose, figured it would be too awkward to face anyone from Elaine’s side of the family who didn’t know he still eats her famous chocolate chip cookie recipe for breakfast twice a week. She looks up before he can look away, grins, and walks straight over.
She’s got the same faint scar snaking across her left wrist that she got when she crashed Elaine’s jet ski at the family lake trip in 1996, and silver strands threaded through her wavy auburn hair that catch the golden dusk light. She stops so close he can smell vanilla extract and baked peach on her clothes, the same scent Elaine used to wear when she’d make pies for Thanksgiving. “Roman Voss,” she says, her voice raspier than he remembers, “you still wear that beat up Ohio State cap? I thought Elaine would’ve thrown that out decades ago.”
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t used for anyone but his golden retriever in months. A guy carrying a stack of paper plates piled high with coleslaw brushes past her, and she stumbles a little, her shoulder pressing firm against his upper arm for two full seconds before she steadies herself. He doesn’t step back. The guilt hits him first, sharp and hot, like he’s doing something he should get in trouble for, like the whole crowd of people he’s known his whole life is staring. But then she looks up at him, her hazel eyes holding his gaze longer than polite, and he can’t look away.
She asks him about the vintage shortwave radio collection he keeps in his basement, the thing Elaine only ever mentioned to her once at a family Christmas 12 years prior, and he’s shocked she remembers. They talk for 20 minutes, standing so close their elbows brush every time one of them takes a sip of their drink, the noise of the fish fry fading into background static. He keeps waiting for the urge to run, to stick to his routine, to go home to his empty house and heat up a frozen pepperoni pizza like he does every Friday night, but it doesn’t come. She tells him she always thought he was the steadiest guy she’d ever met, that when she was a kid she had a crush on him so bad she’d beg Elaine to bring him extra cookies every time they visited.
The guilt wars with the want in his chest, sharp and tangled, until he remembers what Elaine said to him the last week she was alive, hoarse from chemo, holding his hand so tight her nails dug into his palm: Don’t you dare spend the rest of your life being lonely for me. You deserve to have fun. He’s been pretending he didn’t hear her, for three whole years, but now it’s all he can think about.
When she mentions she’s never seen a shortwave radio up close, he doesn’t even hesitate before he asks her if she wants to come back to his place to check out the collection. She grins, nods, and when they walk across the gravel parking lot to his beat up Ford F-150, she slips her hand into his, her fingers cold from holding a can of root beer, calloused at the tips from kneading dough 12 hours a day. He doesn’t pull away. He opens the passenger door for her, and when she leans in to climb in, her hair brushes his jaw, the peach and vanilla scent wrapping around him so thick he can taste it. He climbs into the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the old Patsy Cline song they’d heard earlier blares from the radio he’d had preset to the old country station for 20 years. She reaches over to turn it up, her hand resting on his for half a second before she pulls away, and he presses his foot on the gas, the empty routine he’s clung to for three years fading in the rearview mirror.
