Rafe Mendez, 51, makes custom hunting and fishing knives out of a converted dairy barn on the western edge of Missoula. He hasn’t set foot at the town’s annual summer block party in three years, not since his wife packed her pickup and drove to Alaska with a whitewater raft guide she’d met on a solo trip. He avoids small talk like he avoids cheap steel: it bends too easy, leaves you with a mess to clean up. The only reason he showed up this year was his 19-year-old niece, Lila, who’d begged him to come support her baked goods booth raising money for her FFA state competition.
He’s leaned up against a splintered oak tree at the edge of the park, sweating through the collar of his faded Carhartt, nursing a lukewarm Pabst that tastes like aluminum when he first sees her. She’s standing by the humming cotton candy machine, holding a stack of neon summer reading flyers, wearing a frayed denim dress that hits just above her knees and scuffed white New Balances caked with trail dust. A smudge of bright blue cotton candy sits on the edge of her jaw, and she’s laughing at a kid who’s got pink sugar all over his face, crinkling her nose so the freckles across her bridge bunch up. Rafe doesn’t recognize her, figures she’s just passing through, until Lila wanders over and snorts, saying that’s Elara, the new librarian everyone at school has been complaining about, the one who banned energy drinks in the teen section and made everyone whisper even in the meeting rooms.
Rafe’s already turning to leave, ready to retreat to his quiet barn where the only noise is the whir of his belt sander and the hum of the radio playing old Johnny Cash, when a teen in a soccer jersey slams into his back hard enough to make him spill half his beer down his shirt. He stumbles forward, knocks the entire stack of flyers out of Elara’s hands, sending them skittering across the grass, stuck to sticky puddles of spilled soda and half-eaten snow cone syrup. They both bend down at the same time to grab them, their foreheads bumping with a soft thud, and when they both reach for the same neon pink flyer tucked under a picnic table leg, his hand closes over her wrist by accident. Her skin is warm, softer than he expects, and he spots a tiny black tattoo of a quill curled around her inner wrist, peeking out from under the cuff of her cardigan. She smells like lavender lotion and burnt sugar from the cotton candy machine a few feet away, and she laughs, the sound low and warm, not angry at all.
He apologizes, rubbing the spot on his forehead, and helps her stack the flyers back up, wiping the sticky soda residue off the edges on his jeans. She teases him about the beer stain down his shirt, and he admits he was trying to sneak out before anyone could corner him to ask about his ex-wife. She snorts, says she’s been doing the same all night, since every retired teacher in town has come up to complain that she’s “ruining the library’s vibe” by adding a horror book section for seniors. Rafe’s surprised; he’d heard the same rumors about her being a frumpy stick-in-the-mud, but when she mentions she used to compete in amateur axe-throwing leagues back in Portland before she moved, he’s hooked. They talk for 40 minutes, leaning up against the picnic table, close enough that their shoulders brush every time one of them shifts, and he finds himself telling her about the custom throwing axes he’s been tinkering with in his shop, the target he set up behind the barn for when he needs to blow off steam after a bad client call.
The cover band starts playing a slow, twangy George Strait deep cut, and couples start drifting onto the patchy grass dance floor. Elara tilts her head up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the string lights strung between the oak trees, and asks if he dances. He tells her he hasn’t danced since his wedding, 12 years prior, that he’s got two left feet and he’s probably going to step on her shoes. She grins, grabs his calloused hand, and says no one’s watching anyway. He hesitates for half a second, still fighting the voice in the back of his head that says he’s going to mess this up, that everyone’s going to gossip about him moving on too fast, but the way her hand fits in his shuts that voice up fast.
They dance slow, her other hand resting light on his shoulder, his on the curve of her waist, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin denim of her dress. Her hair falls forward when she laughs at a kid who trips over a lawn chair nearby, brushing his cheek, and the lavender scent hits him again, warm and soft, no loud perfume, no pretense. When the song ends, he tells her to come by his shop tomorrow at 2, that he’s got a small custom throwing axe he finished last week, perfect for someone who knows what they’re doing, that he’ll even throw in a free beer if she beats him at a round. She nods, squeezes his hand before she pulls away, says she’ll be there, and tucks a stray flyer for the adult horror book club into the front pocket of his Carhartt.
She waves as she walks off toward the fire station to drop off the rest of her flyers, the hem of her dress swishing around her calves, dusted with grass from the park. Lila yells over from the baked goods booth, teasing him that he looks like he just won the lottery, and he smirks, not bothering to answer. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, sets a reminder for 1:45 the next day to sweep the porch of the barn, grab a pack of the lemon seltzers he saw her drinking earlier, and make sure the target behind the shop is clear of stray branches.
