Moe Sorrentino, 57, vintage camper restorer with a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2021 circular saw mishap, had avoided the Canton Saturday farmers market for eight straight years. His self-imposed ban stemmed from pure stubbornness, his worst flaw: he refused to cross paths with his ex-wife, who’d left him for an out-of-state timeshare salesman mid-restoration of a 1969 Airstream they’d planned to retire in. He only caved that crisp October Saturday because the hardware store in town was sold out of the cherry stain he needed for a client’s 1962 Overlander, and the woodworking booth at the market was the only other place within 30 miles that stocked the oil-based formula he swore by.
He was reaching for the last can on the shelf when another hand brushed his, calloused, dusted with fine oak sawdust, warm even through the thin work glove she wore. He pulled back fast, then looked up, and his throat went dry. It was Jules Marlow, his ex-wife’s first cousin, 49, who he’d only seen a handful of times at family cookouts and weddings back when he was married. She was grinning, her dark hair pulled back in a bandana streaked with wood stain, a smudge of pine sap on her left cheek. “Still driving that beat up 1998 F-150 with the camper decal on the door?” she said, nodding toward the parking lot. He huffed a laugh, suddenly hyper aware of how close she was standing, her shoulder almost brushing his, the scent of cedar soap and roasted chestnuts from the stand next to hers wrapping around him.
He’d always thought she was off limits, an unspoken family rule, even after the divorce. The last thing he needed was town gossip winding up back at his ex, who still liked to badmouth him to anyone who’d listen over mimosas at the local diner. But he didn’t leave. He leaned against the folding table at her booth, listening as she ranted about the customer who’d tried to haggle her down to $20 for a custom hand-carved dining table last weekend, and when she sat down to pull up photos of reclaimed heart pine trim she had in her workshop, her knee knocked his under the table, and neither of them moved away. She held up a sample of the pine, its grain deep and golden, and said it would fit perfectly for the Overlander’s interior trim, if he wanted to swing by her barn workshop after the market closed. He hesitated for three full seconds, the voice in his head screaming that this was a terrible idea, that crossing this line would blow up every quiet routine he’d built for himself since the divorce. Then he said yes.
Her workshop was a converted tobacco barn ten minutes outside town, the doors propped open to let in the cool air, the space thick with the smell of sawdust and spiced apple cider simmering on a hot plate by the door. She flipped on the overhead lights, casting warm gold over the stacks of reclaimed wood lining the walls, and led him back to the pile of heart pine in the corner. They knelt down to measure the longest plank, him holding one end steady, her stretching the tape measure across the grain, and when she reached over to adjust his grip on the edge of the wood, her bare hand wrapped around his, warm, the callus on her thumb brushing the raised edge of the scar on his forearm. She didn’t let go. She looked up at him, her brown eyes steady, and said she’d had a crush on him since she was 19, when he’d fixed her broken down Honda Civic for free in his driveway after her cousin had forgotten to pick her up from a shift at the grocery store. She said she’d hated how her cousin had treated him, how she’d thrown away 19 years of marriage for a guy who left town six months later.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, the war between the part of him that wanted to pull away, to stick to his stupid rules, and the part of him that hadn’t felt this warm, this seen, in almost a decade, quieting when she leaned in and kissed him, slow, tasting like cinnamon hard candy and the cider she’d been sipping all day. He kissed her back, his hand coming up to brush the pine sap smudge off her cheek, and all that stubborn resistance melted right there on the sawdust-covered floor.
They loaded the pine trim into the bed of his truck an hour later, the sun dipping low over the Blue Ridge Mountains, painting the sky pink and tangerine. He asked her if she wanted to come by his shop to check out the Overlander, then get barbecue from the joint down the road, the one with the spicy vinegar sauce she’d said she loved back at the market. She nodded, grabbing her canvas jacket off the hook by the barn door, and climbed into the passenger seat of his truck. He turned the key, the radio cutting on to a George Strait song they’d both danced to once at her cousin’s wedding 16 years prior, and she reached over, lacing her fingers through his on the gear shift before he pulled out onto the dirt road.
