Javier Mendez, 52, has made custom leather saddles out of his converted barn workshop outside Austin for 18 years. He’s stubborn to a fault, still sleeps on the same lumpy queen mattress he bought when he got married in 2001, hasn’t deleted his ex-wife’s contact even though she left him for a Dallas real estate agent six years prior, and still lives by the unspoken rule he made at 17: his best friend Mike’s little sister is completely off limits. He only agreed to set up a booth at the county fair because Mike, who sat on the fair board, had bailed him out when his workshop flooded last spring, and Javier doesn’t let debts go unpaid.
The first two days of the fair drag. He makes small talk with ranchers stopping to admire his tool work, dodges questions from old neighbors about why he’s still single, and swelters under the canvas tent that traps every bit of the 90-plus degree heat. On the third morning, the booth next to his, empty the first two days, gets occupied by a woman hauling crates of glass jam jars, her dark wavy hair streaked with one thick silver strand falling over her shoulder as she hefts a crate onto the folding table. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lena, Mike’s little sister, who he hadn’t seen since she left for art school in Portland 25 years prior.
He freezes mid-sip of his iced tea when she turns around and spots him. She grins, the same gap between her two front teeth he remembered from when she was 13 and would tag along to their fishing trips, and walks over to his booth. Her boots thud on the wooden planks of the fairground, and when she stops right in front of him, he can smell wild honey and cedar on her clothes, faint under the tang of fried dough drifting from the food stalls 20 yards away. “Javier Mendez. I’d know that stupid peppermint stick sticking out of your mouth anywhere. You still steal those from Mike’s truck?”
He laughs, caught off guard, and scratches the back of his neck. The last time he’d seen her, she was a pimply teen wearing a hand-painted Misfits hoodie, yelling at him for throwing her favorite stuffed bear in the lake. Now she’s 48, laugh lines fanning out from her hazel eyes, a tiny silver nose ring he didn’t expect, arms toned from hauling jam crates. He feels a hot flush crawl up his neck, and immediately hates himself for it. She’s Mike’s little sister. Off limits.
The day unfolds slow, the hum of the fair rides mixing with the chatter of passersby. A gust of wind picks up mid-afternoon, yanking a stack of his saddle catalogs off his table and sending them flying into her booth. They both dive to grab them at the same time, their heads bumping lightly, his calloused, leather-stained fingers brushing hers as they both reach for the same catalog on top of a crate of peach jam. She laughs, leaning in so her shoulder presses against his for a split second before she pulls back, handing him half the stack. “Looks like you owe me a drink for saving your sales materials,” she teases, and he can feel the place where her shoulder touched his tingling for 10 minutes after.
He spends the rest of the day fighting with himself. Part of him is disgusted, clinging to that old teenage rule, the voice in his head that sounds just like Mike saying you don’t look at my sister like that. The other part can’t stop glancing over at her, watching her hand a sample of blackberry jam to a little kid, wiping jam off the kid’s chin with the edge of her apron, laughing when the kid’s mom says she’ll take three jars. He remembers the drawing of a bucking horse she made him when she was 12, scribbled with crayon, that he still has taped to the fridge in his workshop. He hasn’t thought about that drawing in years.
When the fair closes at 10 that night, the string lights strung across the fairground flicker on, crickets chirping loud in the grass surrounding the tent. He’s folding up his table when she walks over, holding a jar of blackberry jam tucked under her arm, the label handwritten in loopy cursive. She leans against the edge of his booth, her knee brushing his as she holds the jar out to him. “Made this one special. I remembered you hated peach, always stole the blackberry jam out of Mike’s pantry when we’d have cookouts.”
He takes the jar, his fingers brushing hers again, the glass cool and smooth against his palm. He’s about to say thank you when she nods toward the dirt road leading out of the fairground. “There’s a dive bar half a mile down that serves the best bourbon west of the Colorado. You gonna buy me that drink you owe me, or are you still as big of a coward as you were when you wouldn’t ask me to prom senior year?”
He blinks, stunned. He’d forgotten she’d even asked him to prom, back when she was a junior and he was 18, too freaked out by Mike’s hypothetical wrath to say yes. He sets the jam jar down on top of his stack of saddles, grinning despite himself. “Lead the way.”
They walk slow down the dirt road, the distant sound of the fair’s cleanup crew fading behind them, their hands brushing every few steps, neither pulling away. The bar smells like peanut shells and old beer, and they slide into a booth in the back, away from the handful of regulars at the counter. She orders a draft beer, he orders his usual bourbon neat, and when she rests her hand on top of his across the Formica table, palm warm and calloused from stirring jam all day, he laces his fingers through hers without hesitation.
