Roy Pacheco, 62, made his living restoring antique typewriters out of the converted sunroom of his yellow clapboard house in central Ohio, a gig he’d fallen into after 30 years as a high school shop teacher, forced into early retirement when the district cut trade programs. His most persistent flaw, one he’d never bothered trying to fix, was a stubborn refusal to engage with any unplanned social interaction longer than 90 seconds; ever since his wife left him for a cross-country truck driver he’d let crash on their couch during a 2012 blizzard, he’d structured every day down to the minute to avoid surprises. The only reason he was at the annual Main Street street fair in the middle of a sweltering July Saturday was because Marnie, his oldest regular customer, had begged him to drop off a restored 1956 Royal Quiet De Luxe at her vintage office supply booth, promising a free case of mint condition typewriter ribbons as payment.
The air stuck to his skin like damp cotton, thick with the smell of fried funnel cake, cut grass, and exhaust from the tilt-a-whirl idling at the end of the block. He was gripping the hard-shell typewriter case tight enough to leave indentations in his palms, the plastic warm from sitting in his truck’s cab on the drive over, when a woman carrying a crate of dog-eared poetry collections rounded the corner of the kettle corn stand and slammed straight into his shoulder. The crate teetered, and he lunged to catch the edge, his knuckles brushing hers for half a second. He recognized her immediately: Elara Voss, 58, who ran the public library’s used book sale, the woman who’d been slipping handwritten notes tucked into the free Hemingway and Steinbeck collections he picked up every Tuesday after closing, all of which he’d stuffed into a desk drawer unread, too wary of what they might say.
Her dark hair was half pulled back with a red gingham bandana, strands stuck to her sweat-shiny forehead, and she was wearing faded denim overalls rolled up to the calves, white sneakers dotted with grass stains from weeding her front yard that morning. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the din of kids screaming and a cover band playing Johnny Cash down the block, and said she’d been meaning to corner him for weeks. He tensed up, already running through the list of polite excuses he had memorized to get out of any invitation, when she leaned in a little to be heard over the carousel’s tinny calliope, her bare shoulder pressing lightly against his bicep. He could smell lavender hand lotion and the faint, sweet tang of cherry snow cone on her breath, and his brain went blank for a second, a feeling he hadn’t had since he was 16 and fumbling through his first date at the same exact street fair.
She was asking him to go to the old drive-in 20 minutes outside town the next weekend, they were playing *The Natural*, her favorite movie, and she knew he collected old baseball memorabilia because she’d seen the vintage minor league pennants hanging in his shop window when she dropped off a broken Underwood for the library’s after school program. He opened his mouth to say no, to tell her he had plans to recondition a 1920s Remington that whole weekend, that he didn’t do spontaneous plans, when a kid on a neon pink scooter swerved around a stroller and slammed straight into his left leg. He stumbled backwards, and she grabbed his forearm to steady him, her fingers wrapping around his wrist firm but gentle, calloused at the tips from decades of turning book pages.
He looked down at her hand on his arm, and realized he hadn’t been touched that softly, not by anyone, in 11 years. The dread that had coiled tight in his chest every time he’d seen her name scrawled on those notes loosened, just a little, and he heard himself say yes before he could overthink it. Her face lit up, and she grabbed his wrist a little tighter for half a second before letting go, grinning like she’d just won the 50/50 raffle the fire department was running down the block.
After he dropped off the typewriter with Marnie, collected his ribbon payment, he let Elara drag him to the snow cone stand. She got cherry, he got blue raspberry, and when she held hers up to his mouth and asked him to try it, he didn’t pull away. A drop of bright red syrup dripped down his wrist, and before she could think better of it, she leaned in and licked it off, her tongue warm against his skin, then flushed bright red and apologized, saying she hadn’t meant to be so forward. He laughed, a loud, real laugh that made his sides hurt, the kind he hadn’t let out since before his wife packed her suitcase. He wiped a smudge of blue syrup off her cheek with his thumb, and told her he’d pick her up at 7 next Saturday, bring a cooler of cold Pabst and the scuffed leather baseball glove he’d had since he was 12. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then leaned in and pressed a quick, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, the cherry syrup on her lips sweet against his skin.
