Ron Jablonski, 62, runs a small vintage arcade restoration business out of his two-car garage in central Ohio, has not voluntarily attended a community event since his wife Elaine passed three years prior. His niece showed up on his porch at 6 PM that Saturday, hauled him off the sawhorse he was hunched over repairing a 1981 Pac-Man control panel, and all but dragged him to the annual downtown block party, saying if he spent one more night alone eating frozen pizza and muttering at loose wiring she was going to sign him up for senior speed dating. He wore the same faded gray bowling shirt he’d had since 1998, jeans crusted with wood dust and solder flux, steel-toe work boots that still had a smudge of neon paint from a Space Invaders cabinet he’d finished the week before. He parked himself by the craft beer tent ten minutes after arriving, and planned to stay there until he could slip out unnoticed.
The line shifted, and she ended up pressed shoulder to shoulder with him when a group of drunk college kids cut through the crowd. Their elbows brushed when they both reached for the napkin dispenser at the same time, and he caught a whiff of coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm, sharp and sweet over the smell of grilled hot dogs and beer. She glanced up at him, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and said she’d been meaning to track him down. She pulled a still-sealed 1981 Pac-Man control panel casing out of the tote bag slung over her shoulder, said her nephew collected vintage arcade parts and had tracked it down for her, no charge. She knew how long he’d been looking for it.
He stared at the casing in her hand, then at her, his irritation melting fast into something soft and unnameable, something he’d not felt since Elaine died. Part of him still wanted to be mad, to snap that she could have dropped it off at his house instead of waiting to run into him at a party, but the other part of him was hyper-aware of the way her bare arm was pressed against his, the way her dark eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the smudge of blue ink on her left thumb from stamping book orders. He’d spent the last three years shutting everyone out, convinced that letting anyone else get close to him, to the work he’d planned to do with Elaine, was a betrayal. It felt wrong to want to talk to her, to want to lean in closer when the band got louder, to notice how the sun hit the silver streaks in her dark hair and turned them gold.
He apologized for yelling at her, said he’d been an ass. She waved it off, said she’d been an ass too, she’d known Mango was sneaking over to his porch to nap on the soft wood of his sawhorses and hadn’t done anything to stop him. She leaned in closer when a group of people yelled as they walked past, her lips almost brushing his ear when she said she did a little soldering for book binding repairs on the side, if he needed an extra pair of hands fixing the cabinet. He tensed for half a second, ready to turn her down, ready to say he worked better alone, but then she brushed a stray piece of sawdust off the front of his shirt, her fingers grazing his chest through the thin cotton, and he found himself saying he had a soldering iron that kept shorting out, and a fridge full of homebrewed IPA, if she wanted to come over tomorrow afternoon.
She grinned, and the expression made her look ten years younger, bright and unselfconscious. She said she’d bring her favorite precision soldering tip, and a batch of the chocolate chip cookies she baked every Saturday, as long as he promised not to yell at her if Mango snuck onto the porch again. He laughed, loud enough that a few people glanced over at them, and said he’d even leave a bowl of tuna out for the little thief. The band shifted to a slow, meandering cover of a 1980s prom song, and couples started drifting onto the empty patch of street in front of the stage. She nodded toward the dance floor, raised an eyebrow, and asked if he knew how to dance. He said he was terrible, hadn’t danced since Elaine’s 50th birthday party. She said she was worse, her husband had stepped on her feet so many times at their wedding she’d had a bruise on her toe for a month.
He took her hand, his calloused from years of sanding cabinet edges and twisting loose wires, hers soft with ink stains on the fingertips, and pulled her toward the dance floor. They stepped on each other’s toes three times in the first minute, laughing so hard his sides ached, his hand resting light on her waist, hers looped around his neck. When the song ended, she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, her lipstick leaving a faint red smudge on his skin, and said she’d be at his place at 2 PM sharp. He watched her walk back to her pop-up book stand, bare feet slapping against the warm asphalt, Mango trotting behind her like a tiny orange bodyguard. He lifted his beer to his mouth, took a long sip, and realized he hadn’t looked forward to a single day this much in three years.
