Roy Pacheco, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher turned custom cutting board maker, hauled the last crate of maple and walnut stock to his booth at the Boise North End Street Fair just as the sun crested the oak trees lining the street. He’d avoided the fair for 12 straight years, ever since his wife left him for a cruise ship magician, convinced everyone who’d ever known them together would side with her. His biggest flaw, the one his old shop students used to tease him for, was that he’d rather avoid a problem entirely than risk looking like a fool.
He was setting up his display table when his elbow clipped a glass jar of peach salsa off the adjacent booth’s edge. He lunged, caught it an inch from the asphalt, the cold glass seeping through the hole in his frayed work glove. A woman’s hand slapped over his on the jar, her index finger rough with a fresh gardening blister, and he looked up to see Marnie, his ex-wife’s first cousin, grinning like she’d just caught him stealing cookies. He froze, half expecting her to yank the jar away and tell him to get lost, but she just laughed, warm and loud, no bite. “Easy there, cowboy. That’s my best habanero batch, I only made six jars.”
He stammered an apology, set the jar back on her table, and tried to focus on arranging his cutting boards for the rest of the morning, but he kept sneaking glances. She was 58, he remembered, a retired landscape designer who’d always been the quiet one at family cookouts, the one who’d hang out in his garage asking about his woodworking projects instead of gossiping with the rest of the family. Her auburn braid was streaked with silver now, she wore a faded 2006 Johnny Cash tribute tour shirt frayed at the cuffs, and there were grass stains on the knee of her denim overalls. She was barefoot under her table, toenails painted chipped coral, and every time she made a sale she did a silly little shimmy that made him snort into his water bottle before he could stop himself.
At 3 p.m., when the sun was blazing hot enough to make the asphalt sweat, she walked over holding two cups of iced sweet tea, leaning in close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and the sharp, sweet tang of pickled peach vinegar on her shirt. “You look like you’re about to pass out from heat stroke. Don’t tell the other vendors I gave you the good stuff, I only had three left.” Their fingers brushed when he took the cup, and his chest tightened, half guilt at even talking to someone from his ex’s family, half a buzzing warmth he hadn’t felt in over a decade. He wanted to pull away, to remind himself this was a bad idea, but she sat down on the edge of his booth and told him she’d quit her design job three years prior, bought a two acre peach orchard out in Eagle, sold salsa and jam at fairs all summer. “None of us ever blamed you, you know,” she said, picking up a cutting board with a tiny hand-carved maple leaf in the corner. “Everyone knew she was chasing whatever shiny thing crossed her path. We all thought you were too good for her anyway.”
By 8 p.m., the crowd had thinned out, street lights flickered on, and crickets chirped loud enough to drown out the distant cover band. He was loading the last of his unsold stock into his beat up Ford F-150 when she walked over, holding a jar of that habanero salsa in one hand and a paper bag of warm peach turnovers in the other. She held out the jar, and when he reached for it, she wrapped her other hand around his wrist, her palm warm and rough from pulling weeds that morning, and held it for three slow seconds, no rush. “I’ve been asking around about you for almost a year,” she said, tucking a strand of hair that escaped her braid behind her ear. “Didn’t have the nerve to reach out, thought you’d shut me out because of the family connection.”
He admitted he’d spent 12 years avoiding anyone tied to his old life, convinced he’d be dragged back into all the drama he’d worked so hard to leave behind, but standing there with her hand on his wrist, all he felt was light, like the weight he’d been carrying in his chest since the divorce had shrunk to the size of a pea. He asked her if she wanted to get a cheeseburger and garlic fries at the dive bar two blocks over, the one with the half-broken neon Pabst sign in the window that had been flickering since 2018. She grinned, tucked her braid over her shoulder, and said she’d been craving those fries all day, she’d almost asked him an hour earlier but thought he’d say no.
They walked side by side down the sidewalk, her elbow brushing his bicep every few steps, the jar of salsa tucked under his arm still warm from sitting in the sun all afternoon, the sweet smell of peach turnovers drifting from the bag in her hand. He didn’t think about his ex once the entire walk.
