Elio Ruiz, 52, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a drafty barn 12 miles outside Asheville, North Carolina. His biggest flaw, if you ask his only close friend Marty, is that he’s turned avoidance into an art form: he’s skipped eight straight holiday parties, never responds to Facebook friend requests from people he didn’t know before 2010, and spent three years driving an extra 20 minutes round trip to a hardware store across county lines just to avoid running into his ex-wife when she got a job cashiering at the local one. He’d told himself for months he wouldn’t do the fall downtown craft fair, but Marty begged, said the vintage section needed a draw, and Elio owed him for covering the barn’s electric bill when a client stiffed him last winter.
He showed up at 7 a.m. with his fully restored 1962 Airstream Bambi hitched to his beat-up Ford F-150, a folding camp chair, and a 12-pack of IPA in a cooler emblazoned with a 1998 Appalachian State football logo. By 3 p.m., he’d talked to exactly three people who weren’t just asking where the nearest port-a-potty was, and was half-convinced he could sneak out early without Marty noticing. That’s when she walked up.
He recognized her immediately: Clara Voss, wife of the county commissioner who’d rammed through the 40% small industrial permit hike two weeks prior, the same hike that would add almost $1,200 a year to Elio’s barn operating costs. He’d seen her in the back of county meetings once or twice, quiet, in tailored blouses, never speaking, so he’d written her off as just another rich politician’s spouse who didn’t care what the hikes did to guys like him.
She leaned in to squint at the custom cedar countertops he’d installed in the Bambi, her black leather jacket brushing the knee of his work jeans as she bent down. She smelled like pine sap and orange blossom, the faint jingle of a silver charm bracelet on her left wrist catching his ear when she reached out to run a finger along the polished aluminum exterior of the trailer. When she straightened up, she caught him staring at the smattering of freckles above her upper lip, and she didn’t look away first, a small, half-teasing smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
They talked for 45 minutes straight, first about the trailer, then about the permit hike. She winced when he brought it up, said she’d fought with her husband for three nights straight over the vote, said he’d ignored every study she’d handed him about how the hike would put small tradespeople out of business, cared more about the campaign donations from the out-of-state warehouse developers pushing for the fee increase. Elio found himself leaning forward in his chair, no longer angry, just curious, the way he used to get when he was 20 and talking to a girl he actually wanted to know instead of just hook up with. When she handed him her phone to take a photo of her standing in the Bambi’s screen door, her fingers brushed his, warm and calloused (she told him later she grows heirloom tomatoes in a half-acre garden behind their house), and neither of them pulled away for a beat longer than was strictly polite.
When the fair closed down at 6 p.m., she asked if he’d be willing to tow the Bambi up to the Craggy Gardens overlook for a test drive, said she wanted to see how it handled the mountain curves, and her husband hated camping so much he’d never even ride in a trailer if you paid him. Elio hesitated for half a second, knew if anyone saw them together up there, the gossip would spread fast, her husband would make it his personal mission to shut Elio’s barn down for good. He said yes anyway.
The sun was painting the Blue Ridge peaks pink and tangerine when they pulled into the empty overlook. They leaned against the side of his truck, passing a can of hard cider she’d pulled from her purse, and when her shoulder pressed into his bicep, warm and solid, he tilted his head down and kissed her, slow, no urgency, tasting the cider and the faint mint of her gum. She kissed him back, her hand curling into the front of his flannel shirt, for what felt like 10 minutes or an hour, he couldn’t tell.
She pulled away first, grinning, swatting playfully at his chest when he teased her about being the first politician’s spouse he’d ever wanted to kiss instead of yell at. She said she’d stop by his barn next Wednesday, when her husband was out of town for a lobbying conference, to talk more about buying the Bambi, and bring him a draft of the ordinance she’d written to roll back the permit hike. He nodded, watched her climb into her forest green Subaru, the taillights fading down the winding mountain road as the first stars pricked the darkening sky. He popped the tab on another IPA, leaning back against the truck’s bumper, the faint scent of orange blossom still clinging to the collar of his flannel.
