Rafe Cordero is 57, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a weathered barn 12 miles outside Asheville, and hasn’t voluntarily attended a community event since his wife’s funeral three years prior. He only showed up to the fire department chili cookoff because his next-door neighbor, Marnie, had fed his coonhound, Bo, for four days straight while he drove to Ohio to pick up a rotting 1968 Avion trailer, and he owed her the favor of dropping off his award-winning brisket chili. He’d planned to leave 20 minutes after dropping the crockpot off, but the line of people begging for a sample stretched longer than he expected, so he leaned against the bed of his dented 2004 F150, sipped a lukewarm Pabst, and tried to avoid eye contact with every acquaintance who tried to ask how his shop was doing.
He’d just finished politely turning down a retiree who wanted him to restore a 1972 Winnebago for half his going rate when he smelled coconut shampoo mixed with the faint, sweet tang of menthol cigarette smoke. He looked up, and there was Maren Hale, 38, stepdaughter of his high school girlfriend, whose late grandmother’s 1961 Airstream he’d fixed up for half price six months prior, when her grandma was in hospice and couldn’t afford the full quote. She was holding a paper plate stacked with two slices of peach cobbler, wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Dolly Parton tee, and scuffed work boots, a flannel tied loose around her waist. She stepped close enough that her bare shoulder brushed his bicep when she leaned in to sniff the crockpot sitting on the truck bed next to him. “I brought you extra cobbler,” she said, holding one of the slices out to him. Her fingers brushed his when he took the plate, and he felt a jolt he hadn’t felt since he was 19, sneaking into his girlfriend’s parents’ basement after curfew.
He knew he should step back. Her husband, Jax, ran the local hardware store, was currently seven months into a National Guard deployment overseas, was the kind of guy who’d helped Rafe haul a heavy trailer frame out of a ditch last winter without even asking for gas money. Rafe was almost 20 years older than her, had known her since she was 12, getting into trouble for spray painting the side of the old community center. This was the kind of mess he’d spent his whole adult life avoiding, the kind of small town gossip that would stick to him like sap on a work boot. But when she leaned against the truck next to him, their knees brushing every time someone squeezed past to grab a bowl of chili, when she laughed so hard at his story about the Ohio trailer that had a family of raccoons living in the closet that she snort-laughed, he forgot all the reasons he should leave.
The rain hit without warning, fat, cold drops that soaked through his flannel in 10 seconds flat. Everyone scrambled to pack up crockpots and folding chairs, people yelling over the thunder as they ran for their cars. Maren ran over to him, her hair stuck to her forehead, holding a stack of paper plates she’d grabbed off the dessert table before it got soaked. “My car died this morning, I walked here,” she yelled over the rain. “Can you give me a ride home?” He nodded, grabbed the crockpot, tossed it in the backseat, and held the passenger door open for her.
The cab of the truck smelled like sawdust, chili, and the lemon air freshener his niece had stuck to the vent last Christmas. The drive to her small cottage on the edge of town only took five minutes, but the rain was coming down so hard he could barely see the road. When he pulled into her driveway, the downpour was too heavy to run through, so they huddled under the porch eave, dripping water onto the weathered wood planks. She turned to him, her eyes bright, and kissed him before he could say anything. He hesitated for half a second, the image of Jax waving at him from the hardware store parking lot flashing through his head, before he kissed her back.
He pulled back first, breathing hard. “What about Jax?” he said. She wiped a drop of rain off her cheek, smiled. “I filed for divorce two weeks ago. Haven’t told anyone but my mom, didn’t want to stir up drama while he’s deployed. He knew it was coming before he left.” She nodded toward the front door, her hand brushing his. “You wanna come in? I got cold beer in the fridge, and that cobbler’s even better warm.”
He followed her up the porch steps, Bo’s old bandana he’d forgotten in his truck pocket crumpled in his hand. He kicked his work boots off by the door, the faint sound of her tabby cat purring from the couch mixing with the rain tapping the porch roof.
