Rico Marquez, 52, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a weathered red barn on three acres of east Tennessee backcountry. He’s spent eight years emotionally walled off after his ex-wife left him for a timeshare sales rep, convinced every single woman in his small town only cares about grandkid bragging rights, pre-planned Caribbean cruises, and judging men for not clearing six figures. He only shows up to the local fire department’s annual October chili cookoff because his childhood friend, the fire captain, strongarms him into donating a restored 1950s metal cooler as a raffle prize every year.
The air smells like ancho chili, pine smoke, and the crisp tang of fallen oak leaves. String lights strung between the station’s bay doors glow soft gold, and the plastic spoon in Rico’s chili bowl is already warped from the heat. He’s wearing a faded Carhartt jacket with a coffee stain on the left cuff, work boots still caked with pine resin from stripping the shell of a 1972 Airstream earlier that day. He’s halfway through his bowl, already plotting his escape back to the shop where he can crack a beer and listen to old Merle Haggard records without forced small talk, when he spots her across the crowd.
She’s the new part-time librarian, started two months prior, moved from Chicago after her husband died to outrun the constant city noise and well-meaning relatives trying to set her up with golf-obsessed dentists. She’s in a thrifted olive wool skirt, tights with a tiny run at the knee, scuffed black combat boots, holding a jar of homemade pickled okra she brought as a side. Her chestnut hair is streaked with silver at the roots, pulled back in a loose braid, a tiny silver nose ring glinting every time the bonfire light hits it. She laughs so hard at a story the fire chief tells that she snorts, claps a hand over her mouth, and Rico smiles before he can stop himself.
He avoids her for the next hour, hovering by the raffle table. The last three women he went on coffee dates with spent the entire time complaining about their exes and asking how much he charged for camper restorations like he was a walking ATM. He’s got no interest in that grind again, even if she’s the first woman he’s seen in years who doesn’t look like she’s auditioning for a church potluck planning committee. Then the raffle numbers are called, and she wins the Coca-Cola branded cooler he spent three weeks sanding and repainting.
She walks over to claim it, boots crunching over leaf litter, and he stands to hand it to her. Their hands brush when she takes the handle, her skin cold from holding a can of black cherry hard seltzer, and a jolt shoots up his arm that has nothing to do with static from his wool sweater. She thanks him, mentions she heard he restored it himself, asks if she can drop off a thank you peach pie at his shop later that week. Every self-protective instinct screams to say he’s too busy, but he nods, gives her rough handwritten directions to his property off the county road.
He spends the next three days alternating between telling himself she’ll never show up and overthinking every possible line of conversation. He cleans the shop more than he has in months, tosses the stack of empty beer cans by the radio, sweeps sawdust off the workbench. She shows up Thursday afternoon, pie tin in one hand, a beat-up copy of Hemingway’s short stories in the other. He’s in the middle of sanding a cabinet for a 1965 Scotty camper he’s prepping for sale, so he wipes sawdust roughly off his jeans before shaking her hand. Her palm lingers in his for a beat longer than necessary, warm, calloused at the fingertips from turning book pages all day.
She walks the shop while he cuts slices of pie, running her fingers along the curved metal shell of the half-restored Airstream, asking questions about the process, no small talk about grandkids or cruises, no prying about his income. She mentions she’s been looking for a small vintage camper to take on solo weekend trips to the Smokies, wants to hike, read by the campfire, no rigid itineraries. Rico blinks, because that’s exactly what he does on every weekend he’s not working, a quirk he never mentions because most people call it weird for a 52-year-old guy to camp alone with nothing but a cooler of beer and a stack of old records.
They end up standing by the Scotty, the shop quiet except for the low hum of the space heater and the distant crow of his rooster from the coop out back, the air smelling like sawdust, peach pie, and the lavender hand lotion she wears. She leans against the camper’s cool metal frame, standing so close their shoulders brush when he shifts his weight, and says she hasn’t met anyone here yet who doesn’t call her desire to wander without a plan childish. He says he gets it, he’s been doing it for eight years, hasn’t found anyone who wants to come along without packing three suitcases and scheduling every meal two weeks in advance.
She moves a little closer, so the toe of her combat boot almost touches his work boot, and looks up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the overhead shop light. He reaches up, brushes a stray piece of sawdust off the shoulder of her flannel shirt, his fingers grazing the soft skin of her neck for half a second. She shivers, not from the cold, and doesn’t pull away. He asks if she wants to see the inside of the Scotty, mentions he just finished installing a tiny wood stove by the dinette, perfect for cold mountain nights. She nods, smiling, and holds out her hand to him.
He laces his calloused fingers through hers, helps her up the small metal step into the camper. The screen door slams shut behind them, muffling the sound of the rooster’s second crow from the yard.
