Rafe Mendez, 57, makes his living restoring vintage pinball machines out of the two-car garage attached to his weathered blue ranch on the edge of Maplewood. He’s lived in this Ohio town his whole life, lost his wife to ovarian cancer eight years back, and has spent the years since cultivating a reputation as a gruff, reclusive loner who only leaves his property to pick up parts or grab a breakfast burrito at the diner on Main Street. His only real soft spot is for the kids who show up at his door with beat-up arcade cabinets they fished out of their grandparents’ basements, and even that he hides behind a scowl and a grumble about “brats touching my soldering irons.” His former apprentice dragged him to the annual summer block party that night, threatening to leave a half-restored 1981 Pac-Man cabinet out in the rain if he didn’t show, and Rafe had caved, forgetting to change out of his grease-stained Carhartt work shirt before he left the house.
He was leaning against a gnarled oak at the edge of the crowd, nursing a lukewarm PBR and tuning out the newly elected county commissioner’s droning speech about pothole repair, when he saw her. Lila, the commissioner’s wife, 45, who’d showed up at his garage three months prior with her 10-year-old son and a dented 1978 Space Invaders pinball machine she’d scored at a garage sale, wearing the same faded Fleetwood Mac tee she’d had on that day, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed white Converse caked in mud from her vegetable garden. She caught him staring, grinned, and cut through the crowd of people lining up for grilled brats to get to him, a frozen margarita sloshing over the edge of her plastic cup as she walked.
Rafe knew he should step back. Knew half the town was already glancing their way, knew the gossip mill would spit out a dozen ugly rumors before the sun even came up the next day, knew he’d spent eight years telling himself he was better off alone, that getting tangled up with anyone, let alone the wife of the most well-known guy in town, was the stupidest thing he could do. He felt the familiar twist of disgust in his gut at the thought of being that guy, the homewrecker, the old creep hitting on a younger married woman, but then she brushed a crumb of bratwurst off the front of his work shirt, her fingers lingering on his chest for half a second too long, and that twist of disgust warped into something warmer, sharper, something he hadn’t felt since his wife was alive.
She tilted her head toward the dirt path leading behind the closed hardware store, the one that wound down to the small creek that cut through the middle of town. “Wanna get out of here for a minute?” she said. “Nobody goes down to the creek during the party. Too busy drinking free beer.” Rafe hesitated for three full beats, every logical part of his brain screaming at him to say no, to go home, to go back to sanding the playfield on that Pac-Man cabinet and forget he ever talked to her. Then he nodded, and followed her off the main street, the noise of the party fading behind them as they walked down the path, the sound of crickets chirping growing louder, the grass tickling his ankles through the holes in his work boots.
She sat down on a fallen oak log half-submerged in the grass at the edge of the creek, patted the spot next to her, and pulled a crumpled pack of menthol cigarettes out of her back pocket. He sat, took the cigarette she offered him even though he’d quit smoking twelve years prior, their fingers brushing when she passed it to him, her skin warm and calloused from the guitar she’d told him she played in a small folk band that played shows at the diner on Saturday nights. She lit both their cigarettes with a neon pink Bic lighter, took a long drag, and told him she’d found text messages on her husband’s phone the week prior, that he’d been cheating on her with his 27-year-old campaign manager, that she was filing for divorce next month, that she hadn’t told anyone else yet.
Rafe didn’t say anything for a minute, just watched the water gurgle over smooth river rocks, a firefly blinking on and off a few feet away from their feet. Then she turned to face him, her face inches from his, and he could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the smudge of margarita salt on her lower lip, the small scar on her jaw from when she’d fallen off her bike as a kid, the story she’d told him while he was showing her son how the pinball’s flipper mechanism worked. “I’ve been thinking about you ever since that day at your garage,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it over the sound of the creek. He didn’t hesitate this time, leaned in and kissed her, her lips soft, tasting like lime and menthol and cherry hard candy, her hand curling around the back of his neck, the callus on her thumb scraping lightly against the short gray hair at his nape.
