Roy Pacheco, 51, makes his living restoring vintage camping gear out of a cinder block shop behind his house in central Oregon. Since his divorce eight years prior, he’s stuck to a rigid, low-stakes routine: wake at 6, drink black coffee on the porch, sand dented Coleman lanterns or re-season cast iron camp stoves until dusk, rewatch old Westerns, go to bed. His biggest flaw is that he runs from even the hint of unplanned connection, convinced any detour from his schedule will end in the same kind of messy, humiliating heartbreak his ex-wife served up when she left him for a whitewater rafting guide she’d met on a trip he’d refused to join, too busy fretting about lost work hours to come along.
He’s set up a small table at the weekly Saturday farmers market on the edge of town, selling a handful of extra cast iron dutch ovens he refinished on slow work weeks, when Lena walks up. She’s married to Jake, the 29-year-old kid who used to mow Roy’s lawn in high school, now six months into a 12-month Army deployment in Germany. She teaches elementary art, and Roy has seen her hauling canvas and paint buckets to the community center a few times, but they’ve never spoken for longer than a quick wave across the fence.
She leans in to squint at the largest dutch oven on his table, the hem of her flowy cream linen dress brushing his scuffed work boots, and he catches a whiff of jasmine perfume and charcoal dust, probably from the mural she was painting on the side of the library earlier that day. Her left shoulder brushes his bicep when she reaches out to run a finger along the smooth, seasoned iron, and he flinches like he’s been burned. She laughs, warm and low, and holds his eye contact longer than strictly necessary, no ring visible on her left hand, even though Roy knows she wears one, has seen it glint when she waves.
“Jake never cooks,” she says, picking up the dutch oven like it weighs nothing, turning it over to look at the raised manufacturer’s mark on the bottom. “Survives on MREs even when he’s home, says cooking is a waste of time. I’ve been wanting to learn to make sourdough, everyone says these old ones are the best for it.”
Roy nods, his throat a little tight, and launches into his usual schtick about seasoning, about how these mid-century cast iron pieces hold heat better than any new junk you buy at the big box store. He’s halfway through explaining how to rub it down with flaxseed oil when she reaches for the small jar of seasoning wax he keeps on the table at the exact same time he does. Their fingers brush, calloused on his end, smudged with pale blue paint on hers, and the jolt of it makes him drop the jar. It rolls off the table, and she bends to grab it, her dress riding up just enough to show a sliver of tanned thigh above her canvas sneakers.
He feels a twist of guilt in his gut, sharp and hot, tells himself he’s a creep for even noticing, that Jake is a good kid, that this is exactly the kind of messy situation he’s spent eight years avoiding. He tries to pull back, mumbles that the dutch oven is $40, cash only, no returns.
She smirks, like she can see the internal battle playing out on his face, and pulls two twenties out of her canvas tote, pressing them into his palm, her fingers lingering on his skin for a beat longer than she needs to. “I saw you out on your porch last weekend, fixing that old green lantern,” she says, tucking the dutch oven into her tote. “I’ve got a busted one just like it at home. And I just bought a peach pie from the stand down the way. You wanna come over later, around seven? Show me how to season this properly, and take a look at the lantern? I’ll have iced tea, extra lemon, the way I saw you drink it at the community cookout last month.”
Roy freezes, his brain screaming no, that the whole town will talk, that Jake is halfway across the world, that this can only end badly. But he looks at her, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous too, the smudge of blue paint on her jaw, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this alive, this seen, in eight years. The fear of missing out finally wins out over the fear of getting hurt.
“Seven works,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it.
She grins, bright and warm, and turns to walk away, glancing over her shoulder once before she disappears into the crowd. Roy packs up his booth an hour early, ignoring the old guy who runs the peach stand yelling at him for leaving before the market closes, and stops by his shop to grab his special blend of seasoning wax and a small screwdriver for the lantern. The sun is dipping low, painting the pine trees pink and orange, when he walks up her front steps, the wax heavy in his flannel shirt pocket. He knocks, and she opens the door a few seconds later, barefoot, the linen dress swapped for a faded Tom Petty band tee and cutoff shorts, the blue paint still smudged on her jaw. The smell of peach pie and fresh iced tea drifts out onto the porch.
The screen door clicks shut behind him, cutting off the distant sound of a kid laughing as he chases a golden retriever down the street.
