Elroy Voss is 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a converted one-car garage in Athens, Ohio, and hasn’t set foot at the county summer fair in 8 years. The last time he went, he caught his ex-wife making out with the fair’s new director behind the cotton candy stand, and he’d spent every July since holed up in his shop with black coffee and a stack of rusted Underwoods, ignoring the distant whine of the ferris wheel and his family’s nagging to get out more. He only caved this year because his 19-year-old niece, home from community college for the summer, threatened to send his mother photos of his freezer stacked exclusively with frozen pepperoni pizza if he didn’t take her to get fried Oreos.
The air reeks of fried onions, hay, and cheap cotton candy the second he steps through the gate, and he’s already mentally drafting an excuse to leave by the time they reach the concession stand. He reaches for a lemon shake-up at the same time as another hand, smaller, soft, freckled across the knuckles, and he yanks his back like he touched a hot stove before he looks up. It’s Mara Hale, the new town librarian, the one the local mega church crowd has been gossiping about nonstop since she moved to town three months prior, left her pastor husband of 22 years and moved into the little cottage on the edge of town with a three-legged beagle. He’d only spoken to her once before, when she dropped off a 1940s Smith Corona for repair, and he’d avoided eye contact the whole time, bought into the quiet whispers that she was trouble, that good small town folks shouldn’t be seen with her.
She smirks, wiping a fleck of powdered sugar from her lower lip, and nods at the ink stain streaked across the left cuff of his work shirt. “Looks like you had a run-in with a stubborn ribbon this morning. I’ve got that same stain on three of my cardigans, from stamping due dates.” Her voice is low, warm, edged with a laugh, and he finds himself grinning back before he can stop himself. He pays for both their shake-ups, ignores the sharp looks from the two church ladies manning the concession counter, and his niece yells that she’s heading to the arcade with a group of friends before he can even offer to go with her.
They wander past the cow barn, the low moo of the prize Holsteins mixing with the twang of the country band playing on the main stage, and she tells him she grew up on a dairy farm outside Toledo, used to sneak into her dad’s office and type silly stories on his old Royal when she was supposed to be mucking stalls. He tells her about the time he drove 6 hours to a garage sale in Pittsburgh to pick up a 1920s Remington, only to find the owner had used it as a doorstop for 30 years. He keeps leaning in closer when she talks, his shoulder brushing hers every few steps, the faint scent of lavender and fried dough clinging to her faded Joni Mitchell tee, and he’s hyper aware of the way her bare arm brushes his when she gestures at a prize pumpkin the size of a small armchair. “That looks exactly like the county commissioner,” she says, and he snorts so hard lemonade dribbles down his chin.
When the first firework bursts red across the sky, the crowd surges forward, a kid waving a full cotton candy cone slams into her side, and she stumbles backward into his chest. He wraps his hand around her waist to steady her, calloused fingers pressing lightly into the soft skin above the waistband of her cutoff shorts, and her hands land flat on his chest, fingers curling into the worn flannel of his shirt. She doesn’t pull away, tilts her chin up so her eyes meet his, the blue and pink bursts of the fireworks painting freckles across her cheeks gold, and he kisses her before he can overthink it, before he can remember the gossip, the grudge he’s carried for 8 years, the way he swore he’d never let anyone get close again. She kisses him back, soft at first, then a little firmer, and he can taste the lemon sugar from her shake-up on her lips, can feel the hum of her laugh against his mouth when a firework booms loud enough to rattle the streetlights.
The crowd thins out once the fireworks end, and they walk slowly back to his shop, three blocks from the fairgrounds, the distant noise of the fair fading behind them, crickets chirping in the oak trees lining the street. Her hand is laced in his, her soft palm warm against his calloused, ink-stained fingers, and he doesn’t even glance at the couple from his high school class who stare as they pass, doesn’t care who sees. He unlocks the front door of the shop, the cool air from the old window unit washing over them, and she steps inside, sets her half-empty lemon shake-up on the workbench next to a half-restored 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe, and reaches for the frayed ink-stained cuff of his work shirt.
