Elias Voss, 53, has restored 17 vintage campers in the eight years since his divorce, but he still can’t say no when a friend begs him for a favor. That’s why he’s stuck manning the small business association booth at the county fall harvest festival instead of sanding the aluminum shell of a 1968 Airstream in his workshop, the air thick with sawdust and the smell of WD-40 he prefers over the sickly sweet cotton candy haze hanging over the fairgrounds. He’s got a mason jar of spiked apple cider at his feet, a stack of custom hand-stamped camper keychains spread across the folding table, and he’s already mentally checked out of the small talk with passersby when she walks up.
He recognizes her as Marnie Hale, the new town librarian who moved in three months prior, the same woman his ex-wife had ranted about on the town Facebook group last month for letting teens check out “unacceptable” horror novels without parental permission. He’d expected frumpy cardigans and cat eye glasses, but she’s wearing faded denim overalls rolled at the cuffs, scuffed work boots caked with red clay, and a flannel shirt tied around her waist, a silver hoop catching the golden hour light when she tilts her head to scan the keychains. She smells like cinnamon and pine, and when she leans in over the table to get a closer look at a tiny 1972 Scotty Camper charm, her shoulder brushes his, warm and solid through his work flannel.
His first instinct is to pull back. He’s avoided any social situation that might involve his ex’s orbit since the divorce, scared of the drama, scared of letting anyone get close enough to see the mess of half-finished projects scattered across his 10-acre property, scared of being told again he cares more about broken campers than people. But she holds up the Scotty charm, grinning, and he spots the faint smudge of grease on her left cheek, the same kind he wipes off his own jaw every night before dinner. When he points it out, she laughs and swipes at it with the back of her hand, leaving a darker streak, and he finds himself snorting along with her before he can stop himself.
He reaches for the charm to hand it to her, and their fingers brush. His are calloused, grease-stained at the cuticles, hers are the same, crisscrossed with tiny scars from utility knife nicks and sanding blisters, the exact same marks he sees on his own hands every day. “I’ve been trying to fix up one exactly like this for six months,” she says, her voice low and rough around the edges, like she spends half her time yelling over power tools instead of shushing people in a library. He makes a dumb joke about how camper restoration is 90% sanding, 8% yelling at rusted bolts, and 2% pretending you know what you’re doing with electrical wiring, and she leans in closer, her knee brushing his under the table when she laughs so hard she snorts.
He knows he shouldn’t engage. His ex has hated Marnie since they were teens, had called her a “rule-breaking troublemaker” a dozen times in that Facebook thread, would throw a weeks-long fit if she found out Elias was even speaking to her. But he finds himself telling her about the Airstream he’s working on, about the way the aluminum glows soft pink at sunset when it’s polished right, about the cross-country road trip he’s been planning for years that he never had the guts to book time off for, the secret he hasn’t told anyone since the divorce papers were signed.
When she asks if he’d be willing to come look at her Scotty later, says she’s stuck replacing the fresh water line and can’t figure out the connector fittings, he hesitates for half a second. She holds up a cold six pack of the hazy IPA from the local brewery he drinks every Saturday night, the same one he’d stashed under his table an hour prior, and says she noticed his brand preference when he grabbed a can earlier. He nods before he can overthink it.
He packs up his booth ten minutes later, tucks the remaining keychains into his work bag, and hands her the Scotty charm for free. She tucks it into the front pocket of her overalls, her fingers brushing his again when she takes it. The bluegrass band on the main stage is playing a slow cover of a Johnny Cash deep cut, dry maple leaves crunch under their boots as they walk toward the parking lot, their shoulders bumping every few steps, and he spots a tiny tattoo of Orion’s Belt peeking out from behind her ear when she turns to point out her beat up pickup truck. He reaches into the bed of his own truck to grab the spare PEX tubing and crimping tool he keeps stacked next to his toolbox, already mentally running through the steps to fix her water line. He slings his tool bag over his shoulder, grinning, when she holds up the six pack and nods toward the dirt road leading to her cottage on the edge of town.
