Rafe Mendez is 59, runs a vintage camper restoration business out of a cinder block barn outside Hendersonville, North Carolina, has spent the last 12 years avoiding anything that doesn’t involve sanding fiberglass, rewiring 12-volt systems, or hauling parts from junkyards three counties over. His biggest flaw? He’d rather sleep on a lumpy cot in his barn than make small talk at a community event, still carries a chip on his shoulder from when his ex-wife left him for a timeshare salesman who wore white leather loafers and called everyone “pal.” He only agreed to bring his smoked brisket chili to the local fire department’s annual cook-off because his next door neighbor, a retired 2nd grade teacher, had fed his two coonhounds for three days while he drove to Georgia to pick up a rare 1964 Airstream Bambi, and he owed her.
He’s standing by his folding table, wiping a glob of chili off the cuff of his oil-stained Carhartt flannel, when her boot taps his scuffed work boot. He looks up, recognizes her immediately: Clara Bennett, the new town librarian who moved in three months prior, the one he’d ducked behind a stack of lumber at the hardware store twice to avoid making eye contact with. She’s holding a crumpled paper bowl, wearing a faded flannel and jeans, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of ink on her left cheek. “Heard your chili’s the only reason half the town shows up to this thing,” she says, holding her bowl out, and when she reaches past him for a chunk of cornbread sitting on the edge of his table, her forearm brushes his, warm through the thin cotton of his shirt sleeve. He fumbles the ladle, drops a little chili on the table, and she laughs, low and warm, not teasing, not mean.
He’s already halfway to saying he’s booked solid for six months when she mentions she just bought a beat-up 1968 Scotty Sportsman off Facebook Marketplace, can’t find anyone to fix the leak in the rubber roof that’s been soaking the back bunk every time it rains. He should say no. He’s got four campers stacked in his barn, clients blowing up his phone asking for updates, a list of repairs longer than his arm. But she tilts her head, and the wind shifts, and he can smell pine and vanilla on her, and he finds himself saying he can swing by her place Saturday morning, no charge, just to take a look. She lights up, slips a peppermint candy from her coat pocket into his palm, her fingers brushing his calloused ones for a beat longer than necessary, and writes her address on the back of a library hold slip before she walks away to sample another booth’s chili.
He spends the next three days kicking himself. Tells himself he’s an idiot, that he’s got no business letting anyone new into his life, that the last time he let someone get close they left him with half a savings account and a note taped to the fridge. He drives past her house twice Saturday morning, almost turns around and drives home, but sees her standing in the driveway, wearing faded work overalls and holding a can of roof sealant, waving at him like she’s been waiting for an hour, so he pulls in.
They spend two hours on the roof of the Scotty, him showing her how to clean the mold off the rubber before patching the leak, her handing him tools and laughing at his story about the client who tried to fix a hole in his camper’s wall with duct tape and a poster of Dolly Parton. When he leans down to point out a second small crack she’d missed, her shoulder presses against his, and he can hear her breathing slow, quiet, next to his ear. He’s so used to being alone, to the only sound in his barn being the whir of his sander and the hounds snoring in the corner, that the warmth of her next to him makes his chest feel tight, like he’s forgetting how to breathe.
They finish the patch as the sun starts to dip low, and she insists he come inside for dinner, says she made meatloaf and mashed potatoes, has a six pack of the same IPA he drinks sitting in her fridge. He doesn’t argue. Her house is cozy, lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves, a tabby cat curling up on his lap ten minutes after he sits down at her kitchen table. She reaches across the table halfway through dinner, wipes a spot of gravy off his chin with her thumb, and her thumb brushes his lower lip for half a second. He freezes, then wraps his hand around her wrist, slow, like he’s scared she’ll pull away, and she doesn’t. She just looks at him, her hazel eyes steady, no smile now, just soft.
He tells her about his ex, about how he stopped going to anything that involved more than three people because he hated getting asked if he was seeing anyone yet, hated the pity looks people gave him. She tells him she moved to Hendersonville after her husband died of a heart attack two years prior, that she’d spent the last year sleeping on a friend’s couch before she decided to buy the Scotty and the small house, that she’d seen him at the hardware store and thought he hated her, because he always ran the other way.
He leaves a little after nine. She walks him to his truck, the air cold enough that he can see their breath fogging in front of their faces. He kisses her on the cheek first, slow, then she tilts her chin up, and he kisses her proper, soft, tastes the peach pie they had for dessert on her lips, her hands fisting in the front of his flannel. He drives home, Johnny Cash playing low on the radio, the peppermint she gave him three days before still sitting in his cup holder, half melted. When he gets back to his barn, he pulls his beat up paper calendar off the wall, crosses out the three weekend repair jobs he’d booked for the next month, writes *Clara’s Scotty* in big blue marker across the first open Saturday, then adds *+ dinner* underneath it, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. His old hound trots over, drops a slobbery tennis ball at his feet, and he kicks it across the barn, laughing when the dog chases after it, skidding on the concrete floor.
