Elias Voss, 52, makes his living restoring vintage camper vans out of a cinder block shop on the edge of a tiny western Oregon town, has spent the eight years since his divorce avoiding any connection that doesn’t involve rusted paneling, stripped screws, or cold IPAs he drinks alone on his porch. His biggest flaw? He’s spent a decade letting his ex-wife’s petty grudges dictate his opinions of everyone in her orbit, no questions asked. He never meant to show up to the town harvest festival, but the retiree who’d dropped off a 1972 Westfalia for a full frame-off rebuild pressed a free beer ticket into his hand before he could say no, so here he is, sawdust still caught in the curl of his dark graying hair, IPA cold enough to make his knuckles ache, leaning against a splintered oak post at the pop-up beer tent.
He spots her before she spots him. Lila Marlow, his ex’s first cousin, the woman his ex had ranted about being “irresponsible, flaky, bad news” every single time her name came up for the entire 12 years they were married. She’s sitting on a picnic table bench 10 feet away, jeans splattered with pale purple lavender stain, work boots caked in mulch from the herb farm she runs on the other side of town, biting into a caramel apple so sticky the golden goop is dripping down her chin. She lifts her head, catches him staring, and waves, bright and unselfconscious, and Elias can’t very well pretend he didn’t see her, so he hefts his beer and walks over.
“Thought you hated crowds,” she says by way of greeting, nodding at the sawdust in his hair, and he huffs a laugh, swiping at it uselessly. “Thought you were busy harvesting your lavender this week,” he shoots back, and she snorts, wiping her chin on the back of her hand before he can even think to offer a napkin. The tent floods with a group of rowdy teens hauling cotton candy, and one slams into her shoulder hard enough that she lurches forward, her knee knocking into his shin, her hand landing on his forearm to steady herself. He feels the rough callus on the pad of her thumb, from months of trimming herb stems, and for half a second he freezes, surprised by how warm her skin is, how nice it feels against the scrapes he’d gotten prying loose a rusted wheel well that morning. She doesn’t pull away right away, either, her dark eyes locked on his, and he can smell her perfume then, faint, like rosemary and vanilla, nothing like the heavy, floral stuff his ex used to douse herself in.
They talk for 40 minutes, the noise of the festival fading into background static. She tells him stories about his ex stealing her homemade peach jam when they were 16, lying to their grandma that a raccoon had gotten into the pantry, and Elias laughs so hard he snorts beer out his nose, which makes her cackle so loud the people at the next table glance over. He finds himself leaning in as she talks, their shoulders brushing now, so close he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when she fell off a horse as a kid. He feels that sharp, conflicting twist in his chest then, half disgust at himself for buying into his ex’s garbage takes for so long, half hot, unnameable desire that he’d been shoving down for years, even when he was still married, every time he’d run into Lila at the grocery store or the town post office.
She slides off the picnic table when the band starts playing a too-loud cover of a 90s country song, and tugs lightly on his wrist, her calloused thumb brushing the sensitive skin just inside his sleeve. “Wanna walk down to the lake? You can show me that 1968 Dodge you keep posting about on Instagram. I’ve been thinking about getting a camper for weekend trips to the coast.” Elias hesitates for half a second, thinking about the small town gossip mill, how his ex will throw a screaming fit if anyone sees them together, how he’d spent years telling himself Lila was off limits, wrong for him, even when he wanted her anyway. Then he looks down at her hand on his wrist, at the caramel still smudged at the corner of her mouth, and nods.
The gravel path to the lake crunches under their boots, the air crisp enough that he can see his breath when he laughs, the smell of pine and burnt marshmallows from the beach fire pits hanging thick. He shows her the Dodge, polished deep cherry red, the fold out bench he’d upholstered himself with plaid wool, the tiny wood stove he’d installed for winter trips. She leans against the side of the van, looking up at him, and says she’s had a crush on him since he first moved to town, but she never said anything out of respect for her cousin, even when her cousin was cheating on him with the real estate agent she left him for. Elias doesn’t say anything for a second, then he leans down and kisses her, slow, no rush, tastes like caramel and hard cider and the mint gum she’d been chewing, her hands fisting in the front of his flannel shirt, his hands light on her waist, like he’s scared she’ll pull away. She doesn’t.
They sit on the fold out bench for an hour, no more heavy talk, just swapping stupid stories about bad dates, terrible family Thanksgivings, the 12 rescue chickens she keeps in a coop behind her farm, the van he’s restoring for a retired teacher who wants to drive to Alaska next summer. When he walks her to her beat up pickup truck at the edge of the festival parking lot, she slips a small glass jar of lavender honey into the pocket of his jacket, says it’s for his morning coffee, no takebacks. He drives home slowly, the windows rolled down, the cool air hitting his face, and when he pulls into his driveway, he reaches into his pocket, twists the lid off the jar, dips his finger in, and tastes it, sweet and earthy, just like he knew it would be.
