Javi Mendez, 52, has restored 17 vintage campers out of his converted barn shop outside Asheville in the seven years since his divorce, and he still gets a jolt of satisfaction every time he drags a rotted hulk out of a backyard and turns it into something someone will drive cross-country. He’s at the county fair on a sticky late August Saturday, already cranky after haggling for 20 minutes over a dented but functional 1972 Airstream door hinge, when he spots Lila.
He freezes mid-sip of his lemonade, the sour-sweet syrup catching in his throat. She’s his ex-wife’s younger cousin. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce was finalized, when she showed up at his shop with a six pack of his favorite lager and told him her cousin was an idiot for leaving him. He’d mumbled a thank you, avoided eye contact, and had not reached out since, too aware of how the small town gossip mill still spins tales about his split, too stubborn to give anyone more material to chatter about over Sunday breakfast at the diner.
She waves him over before he can duck behind the cotton candy stand. The picnic bench she’s sitting at is splintered, a half-eaten plate of fried Oreos sitting next to her own lemonade. He hesitates, then walks over. The grass crunches under his work boots, the distant creak of the Ferris wheel mixing with the barker yelling for people to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl.
She slides over to make room, their knees brushing under the table the second he sits down. The denim of her jeans is soft, and he yanks his leg back like he’s been burned before he can stop himself. She snorts, tapping the back of his hand with her finger when he reaches for a napkin to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Relax, Javi. No one’s gonna bite you. My cousin hasn’t lived in this county in four years, for what it’s worth.”
Her hair is streaked with gray at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the cedar fire pits they use at the fair’s camping area. She leans in close to talk over a group of teens yelling as they run past, her shoulder pressing into his bicep, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin flannel shirt. She’s telling him she just moved back to the area, bought a tiny plot of land, picked up a rotted 1968 Scotty camper for $500 off Facebook Marketplace, and she’s been trying to track him down to ask if he’ll help her restore it.
Every alarm in his head is blaring. This is a bad idea. Everyone who knows their families will talk. He’s spent seven years keeping to himself, avoiding any interaction that could lead to people asking questions about his personal life. But she’s grinning at him, the same lopsided grin he used to catch her giving him at family barbecues back when he was still married, the one that made his chest feel tight even when he was wearing a ring on his left hand. He finds himself nodding before he can think better of it.
She cheers, pulling a crumpled scrap of paper out of her pocket and scrawling her address on it with a purple ballpoint pen. When she passes it to him, their fingers brush, and she doesn’t yank hers away immediately, letting her knuckles rest against his for a beat longer than necessary. “I always thought you were too good for her, you know,” she says, her voice soft enough only he can hear it. “I used to tell her that all the time. She never listened.”
She stands up a minute later, slinging her canvas bag over her shoulder, and brushes a crumb of fried Oreo off the front of his flannel, her hand lingering on his chest for half a second before she pulls away. She winks, tells him to come by around 10 tomorrow, and walks toward her beat-up Subaru truck. He watches her go, the sun dipping below the tree line painting the sky pink and orange, the lemonade in his cup long gone warm.
He tucks the scrap of paper with her address scrawled on it into his front pocket, already mentally listing the sealant and replacement window frames he’ll load into his truck first thing in the morning.
