Rafe Mancini, 59, made his living restoring dented vintage camping stoves and frayed canvas tents for collectors across the Pacific Northwest. He’d avoided the Maplewood summer block party for eight straight years, ever since his wife packed her car and drove east without a note, but this year the silent auction organizer had begged him to donate a restored 1962 Coleman, so he’d showed up at 7 p.m. wearing his usual faded navy work shirt and scuffed steel-toe boots, planning to drop the stove and bolt before anyone could corner him into mind-numbing small talk about the weather or the local high school football team.
The air smelled like charred hamburgers and citronella, humidity thick enough to stick his shirt to his back by the time he dropped the stove off at the auction table. He grabbed a cold IPA from the beer stand, condensation dripping down his wrist to pool in the crease of his elbow, turned to head for his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, and collided hard with someone carrying a plastic cup of iced lavender lemonade. Half the cup sloshed onto the left side of his work shirt, the cold liquid seeping through the thin cotton to hit his sun-warmed skin, making him flinch.
She was Clara, he learned, the new town librarian, moved to Maplewood three months prior from Portland, trying to outrun a messy divorce that had left her living out of a beat-up camper van for six months. He told himself he should leave, that he was too old for this, that everyone in the town would be gossiping by morning if they saw him lingering with the new librarian, but he couldn’t make himself step back. Every time she laughed at his dumb joke about how camping stoves were far less complicated than ex-spouses, her shoulder knocked into his, and the part of him that had been dead for eight years twitched awake, a warm tingle spreading from his chest down to his calloused fingertips. He was equal parts disgusted with himself for even noticing how soft her hand was when she brushed a stray crumb of potato chip off his sleeve, and desperate to feel her skin against his again.
They drifted to the edge of the party, leaning against the weathered split rail fence that separated the park from the oak tree lined street, watching kids scream and run through a portable sprinkler, their bare feet slapping against the hot asphalt. He found himself telling her about his wife leaving, about how he’d thrown himself into restoring gear 60 hours a week so he wouldn’t have to think about the empty chair at his kitchen table, and she didn’t pity him, just nodded, said she’d done the same thing with reorganizing the library’s vintage western paperback collection when she first moved, sorting 3000 books over three weeks just to keep her mind occupied. When the first firework went off, painting the sky neon pink, she jumped a little, stepping even closer to him, her arm pressed fully against his from elbow to wrist, the fabric of her sundress soft against his bare forearm.
He didn’t overthink it, for the first time in years. He lifted his hand, brushed a stray strand of curly brown hair that had fallen across her face, his thumb grazing the soft, sun-warmed skin of her cheek. She didn’t pull away. She tilted her head up, held his gaze, and he could see the reflection of the red and blue fireworks popping in her eyes, the same warm tingle he’d felt earlier spreading through his whole body, making his ears feel hot. “I’ve been looking for a vintage Coleman stove for my solo camping trips up in the national forest,” she said, her voice lower than it had been earlier, loud enough only for him to hear over the crack of the fireworks. “You mentioned you have a whole collection at your workshop, behind your house. Would you mind showing me sometime?”
He didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “I can show you tonight, if you want. Place is ten minutes from here, no crowd, no prying neighbors, no small talk about the football team.”
She smiled, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, and squeezed his wrist lightly, her fingers warm against his sunburnt skin. “I’d like that a lot.”
He led her to his truck, opened the passenger door for her, the bed of the truck still holding a half-finished canvas tent he’d been restoring for a client in Seattle, the scent of canvas dye and machine oil lingering in the cab. She paused before climbing in, leaned up, and pressed a quick, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, the faint taste of lemonade and mint on her lips.
