Elias Voss, 52, makes his living restoring vintage typewriters out of the converted garage behind his central Ohio bungalow, and he’s avoided every street block party for the last seven years. His sister nags him weekly about his biggest flaw: he’d rather disassemble a stuck key assembly for three hours than make small talk with a stranger. He never admits it, but he still carries the dull bruise of his 2015 divorce, when his ex left him for a cruise ship magician she met on a work trip he’d skipped to finish a rush repair for a college professor. He only showed up this year because the 10-year-old from two houses down begged him to bring the half-restored Smith Corona he’d been fixing for him, so he could show it off to his friends.
He’s perched on a dented folding chair by the beer cooler, sweat beading at his hairline under his worn 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee, calloused fingers smudged with machine oil as he taps a stuck ‘m’ key back into place, when a shadow falls over his work. He looks up, and his throat goes tight. It’s Mara, the woman who moved into the house three doors down four months prior, the one whose husband’s funeral he’d stood in the back of out of neighborly obligation, the one he’d crossed the street to avoid three times in the last month alone. He’d felt like a creep the first time he saw her hauling a stack of poetry books up her front steps, sweat rolling down her neck, and he’d had the wildly inappropriate thought that he’d like to kiss that spot just below her ear. He’d avoided her ever since, convinced wanting anything from a woman fresh off grieving made him the lowest kind of asshole.
She’s holding two dripping cans of lemonade, ice clinking loud enough to cut through the tinny Alan Jackson track playing from the speaker strung between two oak trees. The sun catches the thick silver streak running through her dark brown hair, and she’s wearing a yellow sundress dotted with tiny white daisies. “Saw you hiding over here,” she says, warm, like she didn’t notice all the times he ducked around a parked car to skip talking to her. She sits down on the folding chair next to him, so close their bare thighs brush through the frayed leg of his work jeans, and he freezes, half convinced he’ll short circuit right there. The smell of lavender laundry soap and coconut sunscreen rolls off her, and he has to fight the urge to lean in closer.
She holds out one of the lemonade cans, and when he reaches for it, their knuckles brush. Her skin is soft, cold from holding the can, his is rough, smudged with typewriter oil, and he flinches like he’s been burned, muttering an apology. She laughs, low and quiet, and doesn’t pull her hand away for an extra beat. “I’ve been wanting to ask you about your work for weeks,” she says, nodding at the half-assembled typewriter on his lap. “My dad had an old Royal Quiet De Luxe I wrote terrible teen poetry on, until I dropped it moving into my first apartment. I’ve been half scared to look for someone to fix it, thought I’d get scammed.”
Elias’s mouth goes dry. He’s spent the last three months telling himself she’s off limits, that even thinking about asking her out makes him a garbage human, that she’s probably still too raw to even consider dating anyone. He shifts in his seat, their shoulders press together, and she doesn’t move away. “I fix Royals all the time,” he says, his voice rougher than he means it to be. “I’ve got a fully restored one in the shop right now, actually, finished it last week. Been meaning to find a home for it.” He feels guilty as soon as the words leave his mouth, like he’s trying to manipulate her, take advantage of a widow who’s just being nice.
She turns to face him, their eyes lock, and he can see flecks of gold in her dark irises, so close he can taste the lemonade on her breath when she speaks. “I’ve noticed you avoiding me, you know,” she says, soft enough no one else can hear. The cornhole game ten feet away is getting rowdy, guys yelling when someone lands a bag in the hole, but it all fades into background noise. “Thought you hated me, until my cousin said you were at the funeral, and that you leave extra tomatoes on my porch when your garden overproduces. Figured you were just being shy.”
He stammers out the truth before he can stop himself, admits he was attracted to her the second he saw her, that he thought wanting that made him a creep, that he didn’t want to push her when she was still grieving. She laughs again, and this time she reaches up, brushes a smudge of typewriter oil off his cheek, her thumb lingering on his jawline for a beat too long. “My husband was sick with pancreatic cancer for four years,” she says, quiet, no sadness in her voice, just honesty. “We said all our goodbyes long before he died. I’ve been ready to feel something that isn’t grief for almost a year now. You’re not a creep. You’re the first guy who hasn’t tried to hit on me at a grocery store since I moved here.”
He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run from a conversation with a woman he likes. He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop after the party, to check out the Royal, maybe test it out with some of that teen poetry she used to write, and she grins, so bright it makes his chest feel tight. “I’d like that,” she says, squeezing his knee through his jeans before she stands up to go say hi to a group of women waving at her from the other side of the street.
Elias watches her walk away, the hem of her sundress fluttering in the warm summer breeze, and he twists the tab on his lemonade can, the sharp pop of the seal cutting through the noise of the party.
