Javi Mendez is 53, runs a vintage snowmobile restoration shop out of a drafty converted barn 10 miles outside Duluth, Minnesota. He hasn’t attended a single town community event since his wife packed her suitcase and left him for a traveling life insurance salesman eight years prior. He hates the pitying side glances, the forced small talk about how he’s “holding up,” the way every woman over 60 in the county tries to set him up with their recently widowed sister or cousin. The only reason he’s at the annual winter street fair right now is because his 17-year-old neighbor Tyler owed him a favor for fixing his beat-up dirt bike for free, and Tyler begged him to come help run the snowmobile raffle booth for an hour.
The air is 22 degrees, sharp enough to make his nostrils burn when he breathes in, and the street is slushy under his steel-toe work boots, road salt crunching when he shifts his weight. He’s half-counting raffle tickets when he smells cinnamon and vanilla, sweet enough to cut through the thick smell of fried cheese curds and diesel from the line of food trucks, and he looks up to see Lila Marquez leaning against the edge of the booth. She runs the sourdough bakery downtown, the one with the neon wheat sign in the window, and he’s been actively avoiding her for three months. He’d stopped in for a maple scone once a week for six months straight before he heard a couple of old retired loggers at the hardware store joking that he was “chasing the young baker girl,” and he’d bailed entirely, too embarrassed to go back. She’s 41, 12 years younger than him, and the last thing he wants is the whole town talking about him like he’s some sad old guy creeping on a woman half his age.
She’s wearing a puffy cherry-red coat, a wool hat with a fuzzy white pom pom that keeps slipping over her left eye, and fingerless knit gloves that leave her knuckles pink and chapped from the cold. She leans in to say hi, her shoulder brushing the thick flannel of his work shirt under his Carhartt, and her breath fogs in the small space between them, warm against his cold cheek. “Thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth,” she says, and she grins, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, the same way she did every time he’d walk into the bakery and she’d have a scone set aside for him before he even opened his mouth to order. He can taste peppermint on her breath when she speaks, sharp and sweet.
He fumbles the stack of raffle tickets in his hand, drops one on the slushy ground, and bends to pick it up, his knee sinking a little into the half-melted slush. When he stands back up she’s holding a paper cup of spiced wine out to him, and her cold fingertips brush his knuckles when he takes it. Her nails are painted chipped forest green, the exact same color as the 1978 Ski-Doo he’s been restoring for a customer out in Two Harbors. “I’ve been busy,” he says, and it’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either, and she knows it, because she snorts, takes a loud sip of her own wine, and raises an eyebrow at him.
“Busy avoiding me, you mean,” she says, and she doesn’t sound mad, just amused, and he feels his ears go hot under his own wool hat. He’s 53 years old, he’s rebuilt 127 vintage snowmobiles from the frame up, he once chased a wolf off his property with a rusted socket wrench, and he’s flustered by a woman with a pom pom on her hat calling him out. He doesn’t know what to say, so he takes a long sip of the spiced wine, it’s sweet and spiked with rum, burns going down his throat, and he nods. “Heard the guys at the hardware store running their mouths,” he admits, and he shrugs, tries to play it cool, like he doesn’t care what a bunch of retired loggers think about his love life, but they both know he does.
She laughs, loud enough that a couple of kids walking by with cotton candy turn to look, and she steps closer, so their boots are almost touching, slush squelching under her fuzzy UGGs. “You think that gossip started on its own?” she says, and she leans in, her voice low enough only he can hear it over the noise of the crowd, and a strand of her dark hair falls forward, brushes his wrist. “I’ve been telling my friends for six months I’ve been trying to get you to ask me out. Those old guys just have very big, very loud ears.”
Before he can form a response, the fireworks start, bursting bright red and electric blue over Lake Superior, reflecting off the thin layer of ice that’s starting to crust along the shoreline. Everyone around them turns to look up, oohing and aahing, and no one’s paying attention to the two of them by the raffle booth. She tilts her head up to look at him, and the flickering light from the fireworks hits her face, turns her already pink cheeks even brighter, and he doesn’t overthink it. He leans down, kisses her, and the cold air stings his lips, and she tastes like spiced wine and peppermint, and her hand comes up to rest on his chest, her cold fingers pressing through the thick fabric of his coat. It’s over in three seconds, maybe four, and when he pulls back she’s grinning so wide her eyes crinkle, the pom pom on her hat fallen all the way over her eye now.
The fireworks end a minute later, the crowd cheering loud enough to echo off the lake, and she tucks her left hand into the side pocket of his Carhartt coat, laces her fingers through his, her palm cold against his. She says she closed the bakery early, has a batch of maple scones still warm on the counter, and a pot of venison chili simmering on the stove back at the apartment above the shop, if he wants to come over. He doesn’t even think about the guys at the hardware store, doesn’t think about the gossip, doesn’t think about the last eight years he spent hiding out in his barn avoiding people. He just nods, tucks the stack of raffle tickets under the booth counter for Tyler to deal with later, and walks with her down the slushy street, her pom pom brushing his shoulder every time she takes a step.
