Elias Thorne, 59, vintage camper restorer, leaned against a weathered oak beer barrel at the town’s annual fall craft festival, his scuffed work boots planted in a drift of crumpled maple leaves. His buddy Roy had dragged him out an hour prior, griping that Elias spent too much time alone in his shop sanding paneling and arguing with his border collie, Mabel. He swirled the pumpkin ale in his plastic cup, the nutmeg and cinnamon notes cutting through the crisp October air, and tried to tune out the bluegrass band’s off-key rendition of *Foggy Mountain Breakdown*. He’d meant to leave 20 minutes ago, but Roy was busy hitting on a retired elementary school teacher at the next table, so he’d stayed, picking at a loose thread on his frayed flannel shirt, the scar on his left forearm from a 2021 circular saw accident catching the string lights strung above the booths.
He spotted her across the crowd first. Clara Hale, 47, wife of the town’s most beloved pastor, Greg Hale, holding a plastic cup of hard cider, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a faded denim jacket slung over her shoulders, scuffed riding boots on her feet. Elias’s throat went tight. He’d avoided her for three months, ever since she’d dropped off the final payment for the 1972 Airstream he’d restored for her and Greg, had lied to his shop assistant three times when she’d stopped by asking if he was in. He knew how small town gossip worked. Knew people would start whispering if they saw him so much as talking to her, even if he’d only done business with the couple. He turned to pretend he was studying the list of craft beers taped to the barrel, but he heard her boots crunching through the leaves toward him before he could make a run for it.
She stood close enough that her shoulder brushed his when she leaned in to yell over the fiddle. “I knew I’d find you here. Your assistant said Roy would drag you out eventually.” Her breath smelled like apple cider and peppermint, and when he turned to look at her, she held eye contact for four full beats, longer than any casual conversation warranted, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew he’d been avoiding her. He mumbled a greeting, took a too-big sip of his beer, and stared at the ground, his ears burning. She reached across the barrel to grab a stack of napkins, and her knuckles brushed the raised scar on his forearm. He flinched, not because it hurt, but because the contact sent a jolt up his arm that settled low in his gut. She paused, her hand hovering over his arm for half a second, before she pulled back, wiping a smudge of fried dough off her cheek.
He wanted to leave. Wanted to mumble an excuse about Mabel being home alone, hop in his beat-up Ford F-150, and go back to his quiet shop where no one looked at him like that, where he didn’t have to weigh the thrill of talking to her against the certainty that half the town would be calling him a homewrecker by Sunday. But he didn’t move. “Greg left me three months ago,” she said, like she could read his mind. She took a sip of her cider, her jaw tight. “For a 22-year-old youth group leader. We filed for divorce in August, we just didn’t tell anyone until our daughter left for college last week. Everyone’s gonna find out tomorrow, anyway. I figured I’d tell you first, since you’ve been acting like I had the plague every time I stopped by your shop.”
Elias stared at her, his brain short-circuiting. He’d spent three months telling himself wanting her was wrong, that he was a terrible person for even thinking about a married woman, for replaying the way she’d leaned against his workbench back in June, watching him sand the Airstream’s cabinetry, asking questions about every tool he used, for the way he’d gone home and jerked off in his shower that night thinking about the sound of her laugh. Now the wall he’d built between them was gone, and he didn’t know what to do. “I wanted to ask you out for coffee that day you finished the Airstream,” she said, stepping a little closer, so the toe of her boot touched his. “I was just scared you’d say no, or that people would talk.” He didn’t say anything. He just leaned in, slow, giving her time to pull away if she wanted, and kissed her. Her hand came up to rest on his forearm, right over the scar, her palm warm through the thin flannel of his shirt. The noise of the festival faded, the fiddle, the crowd yelling, the smell of fried dough, all of it gone for a second, just the taste of apple cider on her lips, the cool wind on his cheeks.
They stood there for 15 minutes, talking quiet, laughing a little when a group of drunk college kids stumbled past, yelling about cornhole. She told him she’d bought a small plot of land out by the state park, wanted him to help her build a small garage to park the Airstream in, wanted to learn how to do the restoration work herself. He told her about the 1968 Volkswagen Bus he was restoring for himself, had been working on it for two years, planned to drive it out to Yellowstone next summer if he ever finished it. When she asked if he wanted to drive her back to her place, maybe stop by his shop on the way to see the bus, he didn’t hesitate. He tucked her cold hand into the pocket of his work jacket as they cut through the maple grove toward his pickup, the distant hum of the bluegrass band fading behind them.
